The Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) proudly touts its leadership in artificial intelligence (AI), but its real-world performance tells a different story. Despite bold claims of enhancing customer experiences, many are left facing repeated card blocks and a frustrating lack of support.

CBA’s marketing paints a picture of a bank leveraging AI to deliver smarter, more secure services.

In practice, however, their systems fail to recognize even the most basic customer behaviours—such as regular transactions at the same location or the use of multiple smartphones, including high-end models like the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra and Google Pixel Fold.

The bank’s so-called efficiency drive appears to involve branch closures, staff layoffs, and painfully long customer service wait times.

It’s not uncommon to wait over 30 minutes for clarification—especially when digital transactions via Google Wallet are inexplicably blocked, while the same debit card works fine when used physically.

This week alone, I’ve spent more than an hour dealing with repeated card blocks, despite having ample funds in the linked account.

One instance occurred simply because I had two devices connected to my Google Wallet. Another time, a routine transaction at my local hotel—where I regularly dine—was flagged as suspicious.

Today, after waiting nearly half an hour without explanation for yet another declined Google Wallet transaction, I gave up.

This is from a bank that boasts global recognition for its AI maturity and partnerships with cybersecurity firms like Apate.ai to prevent fraud in real time.

If that’s the case, why can’t their system comprehend that digital wallet transactions—secured by 128-bit encryption, tokenisation, and biometric authentication—are generally far safer than physical card swipes? Digital wallets don’t expose your card number to merchants and are far harder to intercept than radio frequency card readers susceptible to nearby hackers.

CBA’s AI should easily flag inconsistency in allowing a physical card transaction while blocking its encrypted digital counterpart.

CBA’s puppet master CEO Matt Comyn

Instead, it continues to demonstrate glaring oversights in customer profiling and risk assessment—despite the bank’s loud claims about its AI capabilities.

Ultimately, CBA seems focused more on appeasing shareholders and maximising executive bonuses than improving customer service. Real-time protection is meaningless if routine customer behaviour is treated as suspicious and card access is revoked without clear justification.

Having already moved significant investment funds to competitors like Macquarie Bank for better performance and service, I can only say this: don’t expect answers by walking into a branch. You’ll just be told to pick up the phone—and wait.

As for their use of AI to deliver efficencies a visit to there web site reveals a number for journalists like me to contact them. The only problem is that their operational AI has failed to pick up that the number is no longer in use.

 

If you have had similar experiences with the Commonwealth Bank please email me at [email protected]