ASIC has filed a civil penalty case against Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) over fees on its CommBiz business platform.

The regulator alleges CBA overcharged about 42,000 clients, many of them small firms.

These fees, charged from November 2020 to 31 May 2025, total about A$8.5 million.

ASIC says the CommBiz terms were misleading as they did not clearly list all Direct Debit and Direct Credit fees.

The terms set a fee for each payment to or from a third party. However, ASIC alleges CBA also charged an extra fee it did not disclose for money moving into or out of the client’s own account.

For example, a small firm that paid 10 staff fortnightly from two CommBiz accounts faced 12 fees.

Two of these were for money leaving its own accounts and were never disclosed.

The regulator alleges the overcharging lasted around 19 years, with the terms in place since CommBiz launched in 2006.

It says CBA received complaints about this from at least 2015. A 2016 internal audit flagged Direct Debit overcharging and called for corrective action, ASIC says.

Even so, ASIC alleges governance failings kept CBA from finding and fixing the misleading terms.

It adds that CBA failed to act efficiently, honestly and fairly.

“We allege Commonwealth Bank broke a basic promise to its business customers, many of them small businesses, that the fees it told them they would pay were the fees they would actually be charged,”

said Alan Kirkland, Commissioner at ASIC.

ASIC is seeking penalties, declarations, adverse publicity orders and costs. The court has not yet listed the matter for a case management hearing.

Featured image: Edited by Fintech News Australia, based on image by Burdun via Magnific.