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Staggering number of closed bank branches revealed
Australian banks closed 97 more branches in the 2026, pushing five-year closures past 1,200 as the country’s physical network shrinks.
- Australia’s banks closed 97 branches in the 2026 financial year, bringing the number lost over five years to 1,215, according to research agency Canstar.
- Bank-owned ATMs fell by 184 over the year to 4,959, and more than a third of the network has disappeared since June 2021.
- A third of Australians say losing easy access to cash would cause them hardship or serious inconvenience, a 2025 Reserve Bank of Australia survey found.
Australian banks closed 97 more branches in the 2026 financial year, pushing five-year closures past 1,200 as the country’s physical banking network keeps shrinking.
Research agency Canstar’s analysis of new data from the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA), showed 3,108 branches were operating at the end of June this year.
That is 3 per cent fewer than a year earlier, and 1,215, or 28 per cent, fewer than in June 2021.
Bank-owned ATMs fell by 184, or 4 per cent, over the year to 4,959, leaving 2,798 fewer machines than five years ago, a drop of 36 per cent.
The closures leave fewer options for Australians who still rely on cash or need help in person.
“Australia’s physical banking network is shrinking and it’s happening at two main points of presence – fewer branches to speak to someone face-to-face and fewer bank-owned ATMs to withdraw cash fee-free,” Sally Tindall, Canstar’s data insights director, said in the report.
“For people who do their banking online, that might not seem like a big deal, but for those who rely on cash or need in-person help, these closures can make everyday banking incredibly difficult,” she said.
“Banks can’t just assume everyone is eager to go digital.”
APRA’s Points of Presence statistics, released Wednesday, track the branches, ATMs and other access points run by banks and other authorised deposit-taking institutions.
In a 2025 Reserve Bank of Australia survey, cash made up around 15 per cent of payments that year, and roughly half of Australians reached for it in a typical week.
A third said they would struggle, or be seriously inconvenienced, if cash became hard to get or shops stopped accepting it.
The cash network is contracting, with Australian Payments Network figures cited in Canstar’s report showing 21,183 ATMs in total, including those run by third parties, 12 per cent fewer than a year earlier and 19 per cent fewer than five years ago.
Major cities took the biggest hit, losing 72 branches over the year to leave 1,674, a 35 per cent drop since 2021.
Outside the capital cities, regional and remote areas lost 25 branches in FY26, down from 29 in FY25 and 122 three years before that, a slowdown Canstar attributes to the big four banks’ moratoriums on regional closures.
“However, this problem has been paused, not solved,” Tindall said.
Among the big four, Westpac shut the most branches over the year with 17, followed by CBA with 14 and NAB with four, while ANZ closed none.
NAB was the only major to add ATMs, growing its network by 21 to 740, while CBA made the deepest cut, removing 45.
Tindall called the Australian Banking Association’s proposed multi-bank hubs encouraging, but said, “the goal should be to make banking easier to access, not just cheaper to deliver, and it certainly can not come at the cost of competition in the sector”.