Bankwest ushers in digital era with app and website refresh
Bankwest is on a mission to grow its national footprint, as it completes its transformation of becoming a fully digital bank with the launch of a new app and website.
Building on its 2024 transformation, Bankwest is aiming to become Australia’s “favourite digital bank”, so it has done a complete overhaul of its digital customer experience.
The new app and website feature a refreshed home page, a ‘money’ tab to view transactions, new search functionalities, and a dedicated ‘property’ tab for home loan information, with 24/7 in-app support. It will soon also feature a new ‘virtual cards’ feature, enabling customers to create single or multi-use time-limited debit or credit cards.
Meanwhile, Bankwest will also soon launch a new brand platform and national marketing campaign to reposition it in the national banking sector, with a new brand identity and proposition across Australia.
It is understood the campaign will be developed by Bear Meets Eagle on Fire, which was appointed as Bankwest’s creative partner late last year.
Bankwest’s chief digital officer, Eleanor Bensley, said the brand conducted “hundreds of hours” of testing with customers and non-customers alike, and found that a “significant segment” of the market is looking for a simpler, less complicated relationship with their banks.
“These Australians are telling us they want just the right amount of bank in their lives, one that’s working hard behind the scenes to help them manage their money, while they focus on what’s important in their lives,” she said.
“Our Bankwest team has started with a blank sheet to re-design and build from scratch a refreshing and distinctive banking app, website and set of end-to-end experiences with our customers that we hope they’ll love.”
Bankwest has been working with EY Future Friendly to re-design and deliver the improved customer experiences over the last 12 months.
EY Future Friendly’s leader, Nick Gower, said: “It’s been fantastic to work with Bankwest as it has redesigned and rebuilt its app, website and signature experiences from the ground up, hand in hand with customers, so that everything is designed from the customer perspective.”
Bankwest’s general manager of customer, marketing, and communications, Jodene Murphy said the aim is “to create a digital banking experience that truly stands out in the Australian financial services landscape, and which is designed to meet the needs of a growing number of customers and brokers nationwide.
“We have exciting plans to deliver refreshing and distinctive digital banking experiences in our app and website and we’re really looking forward to unveiling our new national brand campaign in 2025.”
Bankwest’s digital transformation began a number of years ago, when it shut down all its east coast branches towards the end of 2022. Then in 2024, it announced it would close the remaining 60 Western Australian branches – with 15 converting to Commonwealth Bank sites.
“We will no longer operate a physical branch footprint,” Bankwest spokesperson Scott Spittles told the ABC last year.
“It’s been a rapid move to digital services being the preference for our customers, 97% of all transactions now are conducted digitally by our customers.”
Bankwest’s move to digital banking has not come without its opponents.
Last year, Jason Hall, national assistant secretary of the Finance Sector Union, called the decision “outrageous”, telling the ABC it was a “real blow” for disadvantaged Australians.
“This really shows that Bankwest doesn’t really consider them to be a priority customer. And we really have issues with that part of the community being treated this way,” he said.
The bank pledged to find “bespoke” solutions for its customers who only used face-to-face banking services, but Hall did not buy it.
“Those bespoke solutions will be to learn how to do online banking or move to CBA, and we don’t think that’s a solution that a lot of those people will be ready for,” he said.
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Lauren McNamara was the associate editor at Mumbrella. She joined in November 2022 as editorial assistant, after completing a Bachelor of Communications (Journalism) at UTS. She left Mumbrella in August 2025.
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There online banking experience is shocking, always told to call them, they you wit on hold for ages, as they have no staff.
Hopefully there new app is good, its been very basic for a long time
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Worst app update ever!!!
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As a long term Bankwest client, it was the base bones. It feels like they are catching up to the other banks I use. What a delight!
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