The bank must establish seven things about you before it opens the account, and the list was rewritten in 2026
Opening an account with an Australian bank, building society, credit union or credit card issuer is a designated service under item 1 of table 1 in section 6 of the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006, and the customer is the holder of the account. Since the customer due diligence Part of that Act was rewritten, section 28 states the obligation as a prohibition rather than a procedure: a reporting entity must not commence to provide a designated service to a customer if it has not established on reasonable grounds each of the matters listed in subsection (2). There are seven of them, and only the first is identity in the ordinary sense. The others reach the people behind the customer, politically exposed persons, targeted financial sanctions, and the nature and purpose of the relationship. The Act does not list documents: it requires the entity to collect know-your-customer information appropriate to the money-laundering risk and to verify it using reliable and independent data, with the detail left to the AML/CTF Rules.
At a glance
- Matters the bank must establish before opening the account
- 7, listed in section 28(2) of the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006
Counted from the lettered paragraphs (a) to (g) of section 28(2). Paragraph (g) is open-ended: any other matter relating to the customer specified in the AML/CTF Rules.
- Residence or visa requirement in the Act
- None: neither section 28 of the Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006 nor item 1 of table 1 in section 6 refers to residence, to a visa or to citizenship
What the Act requires is that identity be established on reasonable grounds and verified against reliable and independent data. Whether a particular bank accepts a foreign passport alone is that bank's policy, not a rule of the Act.
- Form of the obligation
- A prohibition: the entity must not commence to provide the service if it has not established the matters
Section 28(1). Sections 31 and 32 allow simplified and require enhanced due diligence in specified circumstances, and section 36 modifies the rules for pre-commencement customers.
Requirements
- The bank must establish the identity of the customer on reasonable grounds before the account is opened
- It must establish the identity of anyone on whose behalf the customer is receiving the service, and of anyone acting on the customer's behalf together with their authority to act
- It must establish whether the customer or any of those people is a politically exposed person or a person designated for targeted financial sanctions
- It must establish the nature and purpose of the business relationship or occasional transaction
- It must identify the money-laundering and terrorism-financing risk of the customer, collect information appropriate to that risk, and verify it using reliable and independent data
- No document list is in the Act: what counts as sufficient is set by the AML/CTF Rules and by the entity's own risk assessment
In detail
What the statute does not say
Nothing in section 28 asks whether the customer lives in Australia, holds a visa, or is a citizen. The obligation is to establish identity on reasonable grounds, to judge the money-laundering risk the customer presents, and to verify information in proportion to that risk. A bank that refuses an account to a person on a temporary visa, or that insists on an Australian address, is applying its own risk appetite rather than a statutory bar. The practical consequence is that the answer to can I open an account varies by bank in a way the law does not, and that a reader looking for the rule in the Act will not find one.
A rewritten Part, and what that means for older advice
The customer due diligence obligations now sit in a Part 2 headed Customer due diligence, with initial, ongoing, simplified and enhanced due diligence in separate Divisions and a simplified outline in section 27. Guidance written against the earlier structure, which spoke of an applicable customer identification procedure, is describing provisions that no longer carry that language. The compilation read here is dated 1 October 2026 and includes amendments up to Act No. 86 of 2026.
Exceptions by origin
No exceptions recorded
Nothing we have read treats any nationality differently for this topic. The rule above applies to everyone.
What the law says
«| 1 | in the capacity of account provider, opening an account, where the account provider is:<br>(a) an ADI; or<br>(b) a bank; or<br>(c) a building society; or<br>(d) a credit union; or<br>(e) a credit card issuer; or<br>(f) a credit card acquirer; or<br>(g) a person specified in the AML/CTF Rules | the holder of the account |»About this source
The Commonwealth of Australia's statute book, run by the Office of Parliamentary Counsel under the Legislation Act 2003. It carries every Act, legislative instrument and notifiable instrument of the Commonwealth, each as made and as compiled, and it is the only publisher in this corpus whose own enabling Act gives its text a standing in court: section 15ZB of the Legislation Act 2003 says proof is not required in a court or tribunal of the text of a registered law, and section 15ZA presumes an authorised version of a registered compilation correctly shows the law as in force on the compilation date. Addressing is by register identifier rather than by name - C1958A00062 is the Migration Act 1958, F1996B03551 the Migration Regulations 1994 - and /latest/text serves the current compilation. Every compilation page prints its compilation number, its compilation date and the last amending Act or instrument taken into account.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: Three things, each of which has already bitten. First, an unknown identifier does not 404: the site serves its own home page, so a wrong guess looks like a short page of search boxes rather than an error, and an absence inferred from one would be invented. Second, a long instrument is served in volumes and /latest/text gives volume 1 only - the Migration Regulations 1994 run to four volumes and Schedule 2, where every visa subclass actually lives, is in volumes 2 and 3 at a separate address. Third, and most important, nothing in the HTML served at /latest/text claims to be an authorised version. Section 15ZA makes an electronic copy one only if it is downloaded from an approved website in a format prescribed by the rules and either the site or the copy says so in the way the rules prescribe; the Act's own example of such a format is a locked pdf file. The words authorised version do not occur anywhere in any of the readings stored from this publisher except in the Legislation Act 2003 itself, so what we quote is the register's text without the status the register is able to give it. The presumption in section 15ZA(5)(h) is also expressly subject to section 15Q(4), under which a compilation need not take account of a retrospective commencement, so a compilation can be accurate on its face and behind the law. It is not a source for the Immigration Rules equivalent - departmental policy and procedural advice are published by Home Affairs, not here - nor for any state or territory law, which has its own register, nor for the text of a treaty, which is published in the Australian Treaty Series.
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«28Undertaking initial customer due diligence (1)A reporting entity must not commence to provide a designated service to a customer if the reporting entity has not established on reasonable grounds each of the matters in subsection(2) in relation to the customer.»About this source
The Commonwealth of Australia's statute book, run by the Office of Parliamentary Counsel under the Legislation Act 2003. It carries every Act, legislative instrument and notifiable instrument of the Commonwealth, each as made and as compiled, and it is the only publisher in this corpus whose own enabling Act gives its text a standing in court: section 15ZB of the Legislation Act 2003 says proof is not required in a court or tribunal of the text of a registered law, and section 15ZA presumes an authorised version of a registered compilation correctly shows the law as in force on the compilation date. Addressing is by register identifier rather than by name - C1958A00062 is the Migration Act 1958, F1996B03551 the Migration Regulations 1994 - and /latest/text serves the current compilation. Every compilation page prints its compilation number, its compilation date and the last amending Act or instrument taken into account.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: Three things, each of which has already bitten. First, an unknown identifier does not 404: the site serves its own home page, so a wrong guess looks like a short page of search boxes rather than an error, and an absence inferred from one would be invented. Second, a long instrument is served in volumes and /latest/text gives volume 1 only - the Migration Regulations 1994 run to four volumes and Schedule 2, where every visa subclass actually lives, is in volumes 2 and 3 at a separate address. Third, and most important, nothing in the HTML served at /latest/text claims to be an authorised version. Section 15ZA makes an electronic copy one only if it is downloaded from an approved website in a format prescribed by the rules and either the site or the copy says so in the way the rules prescribe; the Act's own example of such a format is a locked pdf file. The words authorised version do not occur anywhere in any of the readings stored from this publisher except in the Legislation Act 2003 itself, so what we quote is the register's text without the status the register is able to give it. The presumption in section 15ZA(5)(h) is also expressly subject to section 15Q(4), under which a compilation need not take account of a retrospective commencement, so a compilation can be accurate on its face and behind the law. It is not a source for the Immigration Rules equivalent - departmental policy and procedural advice are published by Home Affairs, not here - nor for any state or territory law, which has its own register, nor for the text of a treaty, which is published in the Australian Treaty Series.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source
«(2)The matters are as follows: (a)the identity of the customer; (b)the identity of any person on whose behalf the customer is receiving the designated service; (c)the identity of any person acting on behalf of the customer and their authority to act; (d)if the customer is not an individual—the identity of any beneficial owners of the customer; (e)whether the customer, any beneficial owner of the customer, any person on whose behalf the customer is receiving the designated service, or any person acting on behalf of the customer is: (i) a politically exposed person; or (ii)a person designated for targeted financial sanctions; (f)the nature and purpose of the business relationship or occasional transaction; (g)any other matter relating to the customer that is specified in the AML/CTF Rules.»About this source
The Commonwealth of Australia's statute book, run by the Office of Parliamentary Counsel under the Legislation Act 2003. It carries every Act, legislative instrument and notifiable instrument of the Commonwealth, each as made and as compiled, and it is the only publisher in this corpus whose own enabling Act gives its text a standing in court: section 15ZB of the Legislation Act 2003 says proof is not required in a court or tribunal of the text of a registered law, and section 15ZA presumes an authorised version of a registered compilation correctly shows the law as in force on the compilation date. Addressing is by register identifier rather than by name - C1958A00062 is the Migration Act 1958, F1996B03551 the Migration Regulations 1994 - and /latest/text serves the current compilation. Every compilation page prints its compilation number, its compilation date and the last amending Act or instrument taken into account.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: Three things, each of which has already bitten. First, an unknown identifier does not 404: the site serves its own home page, so a wrong guess looks like a short page of search boxes rather than an error, and an absence inferred from one would be invented. Second, a long instrument is served in volumes and /latest/text gives volume 1 only - the Migration Regulations 1994 run to four volumes and Schedule 2, where every visa subclass actually lives, is in volumes 2 and 3 at a separate address. Third, and most important, nothing in the HTML served at /latest/text claims to be an authorised version. Section 15ZA makes an electronic copy one only if it is downloaded from an approved website in a format prescribed by the rules and either the site or the copy says so in the way the rules prescribe; the Act's own example of such a format is a locked pdf file. The words authorised version do not occur anywhere in any of the readings stored from this publisher except in the Legislation Act 2003 itself, so what we quote is the register's text without the status the register is able to give it. The presumption in section 15ZA(5)(h) is also expressly subject to section 15Q(4), under which a compilation need not take account of a retrospective commencement, so a compilation can be accurate on its face and behind the law. It is not a source for the Immigration Rules equivalent - departmental policy and procedural advice are published by Home Affairs, not here - nor for any state or territory law, which has its own register, nor for the text of a treaty, which is published in the Australian Treaty Series.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source
«(a)if the customer is an individual—take reasonable steps to establish that the customer is the person the customer claims to be; (b)identify the ML/TF risk of the customer, based on KYC information about the customer that is reasonably available to the reporting entity before commencing to provide the designated service; (c)collect KYC information about the customer that is appropriate to the ML/TF risk of the customer; (d)verify, using reliable and independent data, such of the KYC information referred to in paragraph(c) as is appropriate to the ML/TF risk of the customer.»This is where the familiar identity check actually lives, and it is risk-based rather than document-based: the Act names no passport, no utility bill and no points.
Read it at the sourceAbout this source
The Commonwealth of Australia's statute book, run by the Office of Parliamentary Counsel under the Legislation Act 2003. It carries every Act, legislative instrument and notifiable instrument of the Commonwealth, each as made and as compiled, and it is the only publisher in this corpus whose own enabling Act gives its text a standing in court: section 15ZB of the Legislation Act 2003 says proof is not required in a court or tribunal of the text of a registered law, and section 15ZA presumes an authorised version of a registered compilation correctly shows the law as in force on the compilation date. Addressing is by register identifier rather than by name - C1958A00062 is the Migration Act 1958, F1996B03551 the Migration Regulations 1994 - and /latest/text serves the current compilation. Every compilation page prints its compilation number, its compilation date and the last amending Act or instrument taken into account.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: Three things, each of which has already bitten. First, an unknown identifier does not 404: the site serves its own home page, so a wrong guess looks like a short page of search boxes rather than an error, and an absence inferred from one would be invented. Second, a long instrument is served in volumes and /latest/text gives volume 1 only - the Migration Regulations 1994 run to four volumes and Schedule 2, where every visa subclass actually lives, is in volumes 2 and 3 at a separate address. Third, and most important, nothing in the HTML served at /latest/text claims to be an authorised version. Section 15ZA makes an electronic copy one only if it is downloaded from an approved website in a format prescribed by the rules and either the site or the copy says so in the way the rules prescribe; the Act's own example of such a format is a locked pdf file. The words authorised version do not occur anywhere in any of the readings stored from this publisher except in the Legislation Act 2003 itself, so what we quote is the register's text without the status the register is able to give it. The presumption in section 15ZA(5)(h) is also expressly subject to section 15Q(4), under which a compilation need not take account of a retrospective commencement, so a compilation can be accurate on its face and behind the law. It is not a source for the Immigration Rules equivalent - departmental policy and procedural advice are published by Home Affairs, not here - nor for any state or territory law, which has its own register, nor for the text of a treaty, which is published in the Australian Treaty Series.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source
Practical notes
The AML/CTF Rules are a separate legislative instrument and were not read. They are where the detail of acceptable identification sits, and section 28(2)(g) lets them add matters to the list.
Nothing here covers tax reporting obligations on an account, the Common Reporting Standard, or the tax file number rules.
- consolidatesAnti-Money Laundering and Counter-Terrorism Financing Act 2006, compilation 63
Office of Parliamentary Counsel, Federal Register of Legislation · consolidated to 2026-10-01
About this source
The Commonwealth of Australia's statute book, run by the Office of Parliamentary Counsel under the Legislation Act 2003. It carries every Act, legislative instrument and notifiable instrument of the Commonwealth, each as made and as compiled, and it is the only publisher in this corpus whose own enabling Act gives its text a standing in court: section 15ZB of the Legislation Act 2003 says proof is not required in a court or tribunal of the text of a registered law, and section 15ZA presumes an authorised version of a registered compilation correctly shows the law as in force on the compilation date. Addressing is by register identifier rather than by name - C1958A00062 is the Migration Act 1958, F1996B03551 the Migration Regulations 1994 - and /latest/text serves the current compilation. Every compilation page prints its compilation number, its compilation date and the last amending Act or instrument taken into account.
Standing: Maintains the text in force
Cannot be cited for: Three things, each of which has already bitten. First, an unknown identifier does not 404: the site serves its own home page, so a wrong guess looks like a short page of search boxes rather than an error, and an absence inferred from one would be invented. Second, a long instrument is served in volumes and /latest/text gives volume 1 only - the Migration Regulations 1994 run to four volumes and Schedule 2, where every visa subclass actually lives, is in volumes 2 and 3 at a separate address. Third, and most important, nothing in the HTML served at /latest/text claims to be an authorised version. Section 15ZA makes an electronic copy one only if it is downloaded from an approved website in a format prescribed by the rules and either the site or the copy says so in the way the rules prescribe; the Act's own example of such a format is a locked pdf file. The words authorised version do not occur anywhere in any of the readings stored from this publisher except in the Legislation Act 2003 itself, so what we quote is the register's text without the status the register is able to give it. The presumption in section 15ZA(5)(h) is also expressly subject to section 15Q(4), under which a compilation need not take account of a retrospective commencement, so a compilation can be accurate on its face and behind the law. It is not a source for the Immigration Rules equivalent - departmental policy and procedural advice are published by Home Affairs, not here - nor for any state or territory law, which has its own register, nor for the text of a treaty, which is published in the Australian Treaty Series.
We re-read it every 90 days. More about this source