Corporate watchdog alleges about 42,000 CommBiz customers, many of them small businesses, were overcharged across nearly 19 years
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has taken Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) to court, alleging tens of thousands of business customers on its CommBiz platform, many of them small businesses, were overcharged millions of dollars in fees that were never disclosed to them.
The regulator announced the civil penalty proceedings on Thursday, 12 November.
ASIC alleges that between November 2020 and 31 May 2025, approximately 42,000 CommBiz customers were overcharged approximately $8.5 million.
CommBiz is CBA’s online banking platform for business customers. According to ASIC, customers were told they would pay a fee for each payment to or from a third-party account, but CBA also allegedly charged an extra, undisclosed fee for the matching movement of money into or out of the customer’s own CommBiz account. ASIC refers to these as “contra leg” fees – a second charge on the customer’s side of the same transaction.
In one example, a small business paying fortnightly wages to 10 employees from two CommBiz accounts was charged 12 fees, including two allegedly undisclosed fees for the withdrawals from its own accounts.
MPA has reached out to CBA for a statement.
A 'basic promise' broken
The regulator alleges the problem ran far beyond the formal claim period. ASIC says the allegedly misleading terms were in place from the launch of CommBiz in 2006; that CBA received customer complaints from at least 2015; and that a 2016 internal audit identified Direct Debit overcharging and required corrective action.
ASIC Commissioner Alan Kirkland said the bank allegedly broke “a basic promise to its business customers”. He added that small businesses should not need to check every transaction to confirm their bank is charging the right fees, and that the action should serve as a warning to banks.
Remediation already paid, penalties sought
CBA temporarily stopped charging the fees in June 2025, amended the CommBiz terms in August 2025, and has waived the contra leg fees since February 2026. The bank has completed a remediation program covering 1 December 2006 to the present, paying more than $26.4 million to approximately 93,000 CommBiz customers, including around 40,000 small businesses.
ASIC is seeking declarations, pecuniary penalties, adverse publicity orders, ancillary orders and costs. The court has not yet listed a case management hearing.
The case lands months after ASIC’s review of mortgage offset account failures at major banks, which found banks paid out more than $55 million in compensation for offset failures reported between September 2023 and August 2025.
ASIC said the CBA action falls under its enduring priority on systemic failures by large institutions and its 2026 focus on misleading pricing, themes it also raised when it flagged emerging threats to Australia’s financial system.
It is not the first time the regulator has hit Commonwealth Bank with a civil lawsuit over alleged overcharging.
