As an awardee of Australian Awards, I had been told to open an account to receive monthly stipends in an Australian bank, which in my case is Westpac bank. The bank whose logo is a red "W" is considered as one of large banks in the country. After my scholarship period was ended in December 2021, I have no longer received any payment from my sponsor hence my Westpac account becomes dormant. 

Westpac logo

I was waiting for more couple months to ensure that any pending transactions occured after December have been settled before completely close the account. In order to close the account, turns out the step is so easy. What we need to do is just contact customer service officer of the bank, through a call or chat. I prefer the second approach as it is more convenient and easy, also does not require any cost unlike if we try to call the bank from overseas!

Here are step by step to close the Westpac account. I believe that these steps can be reproduced too on other Australian banks i.e. Commonwealth and ANZ.

  1. First step is open the Westpac banking application.


  2. From the main menu, we can click on the "Contact Us" button showed on the top side. You can choose "Your Accounts" menu then "Closing Account" and select Chat, or just go directly to "Chat Now" button at the bottom of the page.


  3. A bot will response to our request, asking for our intention. In this case, I was simply saying closing account, then the bot will show several options. Just choose "Transaction or Savings Account".


  4. After that, the bot will connect us to a real person to continue the process. The person asked me about whether I have any recurring transactions or direct debit linked to the account. I have no such activities hence he proceeded to the next question about my remaining balance (I still had $1 in the account). He offered me to donate the small fund which I agreed upon. 


  5. Finally, he asked me to wait for 2-3 minutes to process the request. At this moment, I got notification that the account had been unlinked from my apple pay. After waiting, he confirmed that the process had been successfully done and for completing the process I need to wait for the next 2 business days.


  6. The last step of the process was giving rating to the banker who helped me.


    That's all of the activities you need to close the Westpac account. Hope it can help you to close your Westpac or other Australian banking accounts from overseas.