POLi is gone in Australia: what Australians pay with instead

The short answer: POLi stopped working in Australia on 30 September 2023

POLi was a bank-transfer service that sat between a merchant and your internet banking. You picked POLi at a checkout, a window opened, you signed into your bank inside that window, and POLi pushed the payment through. It was popular in Australia precisely because it needed no card and no account with a third party.

Australia Post acquired POLi through its SecurePay subsidiary in December 2014 and announced in July 2023 that it would close the Australian arm. The notice circulated to merchants on 19 July 2023 said that as of 30 September 2023 POLi would no longer operate in Australia. Some providers removed the option two days earlier. The company behind it, POLi Payments Pty Ltd, had its Australian Business Number cancelled on 22 July 2025.

So the answer to “which casinos accept POLi in Australia” is: none, because the rail does not exist. Any 2026-dated list of “best POLi casinos” is either copied from a 2022 page or generated without checking, and that is a useful signal about everything else on the page.

Why it closed: the banks stopped tolerating the login

The reason is worth understanding, because it explains why nothing has replaced it and nothing will.

POLi worked by taking your internet banking credentials inside a merchant-facing window. Banks never liked this: it sat awkwardly against their own security terms, and some told customers outright that using it could affect a fraud claim. One by one they withheld acceptance. POLi's own general manager attributed the closure to reduced acceptance by three of the major banks, which made the business unviable, alongside the cost of competing with the banks' own investment in faster payments. Australia Post framed it as part of simplifying its product portfolio.

In other words POLi did not lose to a competitor; the category it occupied was closed off. The gap it filled — paying from a bank account without a card — was filled instead by the New Payments Platform, which the banks own. That is PayID and Osko, and it is the honest successor even though it is not a drop-in replacement for a checkout button.

If a casino still lists POLi, what that tells you about the casino

This is the practical use of the whole page. A payment-method list is the cheapest thing on a gambling site to keep current and the most consequential thing to get wrong. If an operator or a guide still advertises POLi for Australia in 2026, you have learned one of three things, and all three matter:

• The page has not been reviewed in three years. Which means the bonus terms, the withdrawal caps and the licence details on it are the same vintage.
• Nobody tested it. The method was listed from a template rather than from the cashier, which is also how wrong minimums and wrong processing times get published.
• It is deliberate. A familiar, trusted, bank-branded name on a method list reduces hesitation at exactly the moment a deposit is being considered, whether or not it works.

Use it as a test. Open any Australian casino guide, search the page for “POLi”, and if it appears as a current option without the closure date, treat every other figure on that page as unverified. It takes four seconds and it is more informative than a review score.

PayID and Osko: the closest thing to what POLi did

Both run on the New Payments Platform, the Australian real-time payments rail the banks built.

PayID is an addressing layer. Instead of a BSB and account number, you register a phone number, email address or ABN against your account, and money sent to that identifier arrives in it. The useful part for a payer is confirmation: before you send, your banking app shows you the registered name attached to the PayID, so you can see who you are actually paying before the money moves. That single feature prevents more misdirected payments than any warning screen.

Osko is the transfer service that moves it, usually within a minute, including outside business hours. Where POLi handed your login to a middleman, Osko never leaves your own banking app — you initiate the payment, which is both safer and slightly less convenient, because it is a push rather than a checkout redirect.

For gambling specifically, two caveats. First, a push payment has no chargeback: once an Osko transfer lands, there is no scheme rule that reverses it. Second, availability at any individual operator is a per-operator decision that changes, and ours is a guide rather than a cashier. SafeCasino's Australian list is covered on the PayID page and payment methods, and the only current answer is the one in the cashier.

What your bank sees, and when a bank blocks a gambling payment

Bank transfers are not anonymous and are not meant to be. An Osko or PayID payment carries your name, the recipient's registered name and your reference text, and it is on your statement permanently. If a mortgage application or a loan assessment is in your near future, be aware that a statement is a document other people read.

Banks also decline gambling transactions at their own discretion, and offshore merchants are declined more often than local ones. A method that worked last month can simply stop. Separately, most Australian banks now offer a customer-controlled gambling block you can switch on in the app, which blocks gambling transactions at the card or account level — and some apply a cooling-off period of a day or more before it can be switched off again.

We are not going to suggest ways around a declined gambling payment, and you should be sceptical of any page that does. A decline is either the bank's risk rules or a block you or someone else set, and both of those are working as designed. If a payment is being blocked and you find yourself looking for a workaround, that is worth noticing: free, confidential support in Australia is on 1800 858 858, Gambling Help Online, 24 hours a day.

One more rule belongs here. Since 11 June 2024 Australian-licensed online wagering providers may not accept credit cards, credit-related products or digital currencies, under amendments to the Interactive Gambling Act 2001 enforced by the ACMA. Offshore casinos are not licensed here and do not comply with it, which is explained on whether Australians can legally play online. The policy logic still applies to you even where the rule does not: gambling on borrowed money is the mechanism by which losses compound.

Prepaid vouchers: Neosurf, and why they are one-way

A voucher is the opposite of a bank transfer. Nothing about your bank reaches the operator: you buy a code over a counter or from an online reseller, and the code is the money. It is the closest thing to cash in this market, it builds a hard budget in by design, and SafeCasino takes Neosurf from A$10.

Two costs. Online resellers add a service fee at checkout, which is a small number and a large percentage on a A$10 voucher — the arithmetic is on where to buy a Neosurf voucher. And a voucher cannot receive a payout. There is no mechanism that sends money back to a code on a receipt, so a voucher depositor needs a second, outbound method set up in their own name before the first win, not after it.

That asymmetry is the single most important fact in Australian casino payments and it is left out of nearly every voucher page, because it complicates the sale.

Crypto: the realistic cash-out route, and the network fee on a small amount

Crypto is the one method on this page that reliably works in both directions at offshore operators, which is why it has quietly become the default for anyone cashing out. SafeCasino lists BTC, ETH, LTC, XRP and USDT, with a 10 EUR/USD equivalent minimum either way.

Three practical points, in order of how much they cost people:

1. The network must match exactly. USDT exists on several networks and they are not interchangeable. Copy the network from the cashier, not from memory, and send a small test transfer first. Funds sent on the wrong network are usually unrecoverable, and no support ticket fixes that.
2. There are two conversion steps. Australian dollars to crypto on the way in, crypto to Australian dollars on the way out, each with a spread. On a small amount those two spreads plus the network fee can outweigh the convenience; on a large withdrawal they are trivial compared with a bank wire.
3. The wallet must be yours. Third-party payments are not permitted, so the exchange or wallet account has to match the casino account name — which also means the identity check applies, and crypto is not a way around verification.

Detail is on the crypto casino page, and the caps and timings are on withdrawals.

All five methods compared

Operator figures in that table are SafeCasino's published ones and they move. Read them in the cashier before acting on them. Because method lists are where two operators differ most sharply — far more than their bonus headlines — comparing two sets is the comparison worth making. Open a second operator's method list ↗ · Advertisement, partner link, opens in a new tab and read it against the row you care about. Both are paid placements here, and neither holds an Australian licence.

Which one fits you

Three taps, no account details, nothing sent anywhere. It weighs the only three things that actually separate these methods: whether money has to come back out, whether your bank should see it, and how small the first deposit is.

POLi in New Zealand — which is why the confusion persists

POLi did not shut down worldwide. The New Zealand operation continued, supported through a local distributor, which means POLi remains a genuine payment option for New Zealanders while being unavailable to Australians. That single fact explains most of the bad information in this search result: a guide written for a mixed Australasian audience, or scraped from one, will show POLi as live, and it is not technically wrong — it is wrong about the country.

Two practical consequences. If you are in New Zealand, this page is not about you and the method may well work. And if you are in Australia and a site offers POLi, check whether the rest of the page is written for New Zealand too, because currency figures, licensing and self-exclusion schemes all differ and none of the New Zealand ones apply here.

Gambling costs money and carries real financial risk. Free, confidential support in Australia: Gambling Help Online, 1800 858 858, 24 hours a day. BetStop, the national self-exclusion register, covers licensed Australian online and phone wagering providers and does not cover offshore casinos — a limit set out on our responsible gambling page.