Banks in Australia primarily operate on a five-day banking schedule. Standard business hours for the vast majority of physical bank branches are Monday to Friday (typically from 9:30 AM to 4:00 PM or 5:00 PM). Banks remain closed on Sundays and national public holidays.
The transition to five-day banking in Australia officially began state-by-state between 1961 and 1963. Because Australia’s states separately controlled the legislation governing trading hours and public holidays, there wasn’t a single national start date. Instead, it rolled out progressively:
1962–1963: Other major states like Victoria, Queensland, and Western Australia followed suit, passing their own legislative amendments. By January 1963, the five-day banking week (Monday through Friday) was effectively the new norm across the country.
1961: New South Wales led the transition by passing the Banks and Bank Holidays (Amendment) Act 1961, which officially designated Saturdays as bank holidays and eliminated mandatory Saturday morning trading.
Most bank branches in Australia are open from 9:30 AM to 4:00 PM, Monday through Thursday, and 9:30 AM to 5:00 PM on Fridays.
Following World War II, the Commonwealth Court of Conciliation and Arbitration established the standard 40-hour, five-day workweek for most Australian industries in 1947.
Bank staff argued that they were being treated unfairly because they still had to work a “split week”—working Monday through Friday, plus a compulsory Saturday morning shift (typically from 9:30 AM to 11:30 AM).
The Australian Bank Officials’ Association (ABOA) lobbied aggressively for over a decade, arguing that Saturday work harmed the work-life balance of banking staff and hindered recruitment.
Because early Australian constitutional law gave states the authority to dictate trading hours and public holidays, the federal government couldn’t enforce a single national changes across commercial banks. This led to a gradual domino effect. Tasmania actually led the country in experimentation, implementing early trial versions of Saturday closures in specific regions during the 1950s.
The definitive shift happened when the most populous economic states—New South Wales and Victoria—passed amendments to their Banks and Bank Holidays Acts. Once the massive branch networks in Sydney and Melbourne closed on Saturdays, the remaining states (Queensland, South Australia, and Western Australia) had to rapidly fall in line to ensure the national financial clearing systems remained aligned.
For convenience of public, the government mandated the “Late Night Friday” compromise. Regular bank hours from Monday to Thursday remained 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM. On Fridays, banks were legally required to reopen from 4:00 PM to 5:00 PM to allow workers to cash their weekly paychecks before the weekend. This tradition lasted for decades until electronic payroll systems became mainstream.
