Sports betting with POLi in New Zealand

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

A punter in New Zealand who wants to fund a betting account from a normal bank account, without typing a card number in, has a short list of working options. POLi is the most often-named one. The question this page actually answers is wider: which New Zealand-facing bookmakers take it, which ones never did, what moves on the money side once the deposit clears, and what the punter gains or loses by betting with a brand that does not hold a New Zealand licence. That last point is not a footnote here — from 28 June 2025, the law treats anyone taking a sports or racing bet from a person in New Zealand as being outside the law, so the question of which bookmaker you are sending money to is no longer a payment-method curiosity. It is the bet itself.

Current as of October 30, 2026, checked against the Department of Internal Affairs (the regulator under the Gambling Act 2003 and the Racing Industry Act 2020) and TAB NZ’s published terms.

Paying a bookmaker with POLi — the cashier side of things

POLi is a payments middleman that sits between a punter’s bank and the merchant. A bettor selects POLi at the cashier, picks their bank from a list, logs into internet banking through the POLi screen, and authorises a direct debit from the nominated account. POLi does not store card numbers because there is no card involved — the money moves from the bank account, not from a Visa or Mastercard product. POLi states that it does not capture usernames or passwords; Consumer NZ reports that the screen the punter logs into is, in practice, the bank’s own internet banking portal, and that this way of paying requires the user to enter internet-banking login details into a third-party screen. The same Consumer NZ reporting notes that doing so breaches the terms of ASB, BNZ and Westpac and may breach those of ANZ and Kiwibank. POLi’s director, also quoted by Consumer NZ, says no bank has taken a customer to task for POLi use and that POLi is safe. Both positions are on the record; the punter decides whose framing they trust.

The cashier experience itself runs smoother than the bank-terms debate suggests. POLi lists ANZ, BNZ, ASB, Kiwibank, TSB, The Cooperative Bank and Westpac among its supported banks, and Heartland appears in the same logos row. For a bettor with an account at any of those seven, POLi opens the door. Anyone banking with a building society outside that list, or with a credit union or non-bank lender, has to use a different method — a card, a bank transfer, an e-wallet or, at a small number of brands, crypto.

POLi is run in New Zealand by Merco Ltd, which became the master distributor of POLi when Australia Post closed its Australian POLi service on 30 September 2023. The merchant side of POLi is what matters for a bettor: the bookmaker sets up POLi as a deposit method, the punter pays through POLi from their bank, the bookmaker’s account is credited almost immediately in most cases. POLi describes the security as the customer’s own bank security — the same login, the same second-factor prompt, the same fraud protection the punter gets paying any bill.

How POLi shows up at a bookmaker cashier

What the punter actually does, end to end:

• Picks Deposit, chooses POLi from the list of payment methods. The list is set by the bookmaker, not by POLi, and POLi does not appear everywhere.
• Enters the stake amount in NZ dollars. POLi is a New Zealand dollar method — no conversion, no FX margin to look out for.
• Selects the bank. The list is the one above; if the punter’s bank is not there, POLi is not an option for them on this site.
• Logs into internet banking through the screen POLi opens. This is the step Consumer NZ flags: the third-party screen receives the login.
• Authorises the direct debit. The bank sends the usual confirmation.
• The bookmaker account is credited. Most NZ-facing bookmakers post POLi deposits instantly; a small number queue them in a pending window of up to a few hours.

There is no separate POLi app. There is no POLi wallet holding the funds. There is no fee from POLi for a standard transaction; the bookmaker decides whether to charge one on top, and POLi’s own site does not advertise a bookmaker-side fee.

Why POLi is not universal, even where it fits

POLi needs to be integrated into the bookmaker’s cashier for the punter to see the option. From the merchant’s point of view, the integration has costs and the customer pays in NZ dollars, so the merchant faces exchange-rate risk only on conversions of winnings back to NZD. A bookmaker that sells mainly into Australia may see little reason to keep POLi live; a bookmaker licensed for New Zealand as a regulated betting channel may be required to offer it as a deposit option. TAB NZ’s deposit methods come only from its own published terms, not from any statutory payment rule (no such rule was found in the Gambling Act 2003 or the Racing Industry Act 2020). What the punter meets in the cashier is what TAB NZ chooses to list.

The same is true of any other brand. Spinbara, Thunderpick, Winz, Betninja and the rest of the offshore group all list their own deposit methods. A punter who has decided to send money to one of them cannot assume POLi is there; the cashier is the only place that confirms it.

The withdrawal problem nobody talks about at deposit time

A POLi deposit clears in seconds because the money is being pulled from the bank account the punter has just authorised. A POLi withdrawal is a different operation. POLi was built for outgoing payments — the direction is the punter’s bank to the merchant — and most bookmakers that accept POLi for deposits do not pay winnings back through POLi. The punter is paid by bank transfer, by the same POLi service if it supports pay-outs in that currency, or by an alternative method the bookmaker has set up.

That asymmetry drives most of the friction bettors actually feel. The deposit works first time. The first withdrawal asks for proof of address, sometimes a source-of-funds check, and a destination that is not the same POLi screen. A punter who has deposited $50 with POLi and won $400 may wait one to three business days for the bank credit, even on an instant-withdrawal bookmaker, simply because the payout runs through a different rail. This is the slot where anonymous, offshore-friendly brands feel the slowest and where TAB NZ’s own rails feel the most predictable.

The shortlist of bookmakers a New Zealand punter can pay with POLi

The list of brands a New Zealand punter actually meets, in two groups. TAB NZ brands are the two online bookmakers lawfully permitted to take sports and racing bets from a person in New Zealand since 28 June 2025, when an amendment to the Racing Industry Act 2020 took effect. Every other brand on this page is “not licensed in New Zealand”. The split is the law’s, not this page’s.

TAB NZ runs TAB and Betcha as two distinct brands on one operator group. Entain runs the TAB business under a 25-year agreement signed in 2023; the deal hands Entain a 50/50 share of gross profits, with at least $150 million a year going to TAB NZ for the first five years, and Entain pledged a one-off $100 million payment to the racing sector. The two brands are not rivals and not alternatives to each other in any competitive sense — they are two shopfronts for the same monopoly operator, and treating them as separate bookmakers is the kind of mistake a punter makes only once.

The second group are brands with a web presence visible from New Zealand that take sports bets from people in many countries but hold no New Zealand betting licence. Most are part of large groups that also run casino, live casino and esports verticals. Tab NZ’s cashier accepts POLi; the offshore cashier rarely does. This is the practical rule, even where the offshore brand is well built and well reviewed elsewhere: the New Zealand punter cannot deposit with POLi there, and so it does not appear in a POLi shortlist for a New Zealand audience.

Comparing the field on the matters that matter here

The table below covers what research backs, not what marketing puts first. Where the operator’s own terms do not state a figure, the cell stays blank — a dash there is honest, and an invented one is not. POLi availability for TAB NZ brands is the central fact for this page; everything else is shape and context.

Thirteen rows, two of them lawful under New Zealand law. The pattern in column three is deliberate: TAB NZ’s two brands show POLi as a deposit method because they are regulated for the New Zealand market and have the integration to maintain. None of the offshore brands on the list does, and none of them is required to. Some of them take cards and e-wallets a New Zealand punter can still use, a few are built around crypto, and a couple let the punter deposit in NZ dollars by bank transfer at a fee that varies by rail — none of which makes them a POLi bookmaker, which is the question this page was written to settle.

The fundamentals bettors in New Zealand actually face

The single most important fact about sports betting in New Zealand is not a payment detail. It is the law. From 28 June 2025, the Racing Industry Amendment Act 2025 inserted section 74AAA into the Racing Industry Act 2020, and the Department of Internal Affairs told every operator serving New Zealand residents to withdraw with immediate effect. The law says no person other than TAB NZ may offer racing betting, sports betting or other racing or sports betting to a person in New Zealand, regardless of where that person is resident or incorporated. TAB NZ is the holder; TAB and Betcha are its two online brands.

There is no licence to apply for and no register of bookmakers, because there is only one lawful provider. The Department of Internal Affairs runs the Gambling Act 2003 and monitors compliance with the betting prohibition under section 92A of the Racing Industry Act 2020. The Online Casino Gambling Act 2026 sits beside this regime and does what its title suggests: it licenses online casino gambling only. TAB NZ winning the right to apply for a casino licence does not extend the sports-betting monopoly to anyone else.

That puts a New Zealand punter in a particular position. The choice between TAB and Betcha is a choice of layout, of branding, of which app you prefer to look at — it is not a choice between two rival bookmakers. The real choice, which no New Zealand-facing article can advertise and which no responsible comparison urges, is between betting through the regulated channel or trying to find a way to bet outside it. The page does not recommend either path. It explains what each one costs the punter, in plain terms, so a reader can decide for themselves.

What TAB NZ takes bets on, and how, is the rest of the fundamental picture. TAB NZ takes fixed-odds and tote (pool) bets; its published betting rules cover Win, Place, Each Way, Quinella, Exacta, Trifecta, First Four, Double, Treble, Daily Double, Running Double, Quaddie and Big6, plus Multis and Same Game Multis. Live betting is listed in the TAB NZ apps. There is no statutory per-bet cap; limits are TAB NZ’s own terms. The ban covers events held inside and outside New Zealand, which is why offshore brands lose the argument that they are merely serving customers in other jurisdictions while ignoring New Zealand ones.

What the punter can and cannot bet on

TAB NZ takes bets on thoroughbred, harness (trots) and greyhound racing codes, plus a wide range of sports — rugby, rugby league, cricket, football, basketball, tennis, the codes that fill out a New Zealand Saturday. Greyhound racing is closing in stages from 1 August 2026, and from that date offshore operators may not take bets on greyhound races either. That detail is not on every punter’s radar, and it matters most for the small specialist who follows a code rather than a sport.

The split between betting and casino licences is what makes this question hard for a casual reader. A casino licence under the Online Casino Gambling Act 2026 does not allow sports betting. A bookmaker licensed offshore in a well-regulated jurisdiction, taking casino bets from New Zealand residents, is in a different category from one taking sports bets. The two go through separate regulators, separate levies and separate complaint processes. The page treats them as different products because they are.

Virtual sport — computer-simulated events with odds attached — is treated by the 2026 casino law as casino gambling, not sports betting. Esports sits in a grey zone the law has not closed: whether esports betting counts as “sports betting” under the Racing Industry Act 2020 is not established by any source in research. A New Zealand punter who finds an esports market on an offshore site is reading those terms against an unanswered legal question, not against a settled rule.

Currency, taxes, and what Inland Revenue has to say

For a recreational punter, gambling winnings are generally not taxable in New Zealand. Prize money from TAB horse, dog and trotting races is not taxable either. A punter who bets as a business is a separate case and the appropriate response is to consult Inland Revenue or an accountant. Inland Revenue’s guidance is general information, not advice, and the page treats it the same way.

On the operator side, TAB NZ pays the Problem Gambling Levy at 0.74%, in force from 1 July 2025 to 30 June 2028. Overseas operators supplying New Zealand residents pay online gambling duty — 12% of profits since 1 July 2024, rising to 16% from 1 January 2027. The duty being payable does not make an offer lawful, and the page never writes “this brand is legal because it pays tax to New Zealand”. The duty is a tax on offshore profits; the prohibition is in the Racing Industry Act 2020 and the two are not the same thing. The point-of-consumption charge on offshore racing and sports bets ceased on 30 June 2026.

The legality frame for a New Zealand punter

The Racing Industry Act 2020 establishes TAB NZ as the sole betting provider for racing and sports in New Zealand. The Racing Industry Amendment Act 2025 inserted section 74AAA: no person other than TAB NZ may offer racing betting, sports betting or other racing or sports betting to a person in New Zealand, regardless of where that person is resident or incorporated. The Department of Internal Affairs runs the Gambling Act 2003 and monitors compliance with the prohibition under section 92A of the Racing Industry Act 2020.

The law targets the operator. Section 19(4) of the Gambling Act 2003 (inserted in 2025) says an individual may not be convicted for placing a bet with an offshore betting operator in breach of section 74AAA. No source in research states a penalty for the player. The Department of Internal Affairs does warn, in plain language, that overseas operators may be in jurisdictions with minimal consumer safeguards, may not return unspent credits and may not pay out large wins. That warning is what an honest comparison rests on, because it is the regulator’s own account of what is at stake.

The advertising frame sits alongside. The Advertising Standards Authority’s Gambling Advertising Code applies to betting advertisements: ads must not target children (under 14) or young people (14 to under 18), judged by context, appeal and expected audience (25% or more of the audience counts as significant where accurate data exists), must not encourage harm and must be truthful with terms available. Because only TAB NZ may offer betting in New Zealand, the Department of Internal Affairs reads the prohibition as covering promoting or taking such bets for another operator. How the Department treats betting affiliates is not established. The page describes the monopoly; it never invites readers to sign up with an offshore brand.

What an offshore brand costs the punter

The straightforward answer is “the protections of a New Zealand betting channel”. A punter betting with TAB NZ bets under a New Zealand operator, in New Zealand dollars, on a New Zealand-harm-minimisation regime, with New Zealand recourse if a payout goes wrong. A punter betting with an offshore brand bets against that brand’s own house rules, in whatever currency the cashier settles in, with the complaint procedure the brand’s licence requires and no New Zealand backstop.

The Department of Internal Affairs spells out what that means in its public messaging. An offshore operator may not return unspent credits. An offshore operator may not pay out large wins. An offshore operator may be in a jurisdiction with minimal consumer safeguards. None of these statements is a prediction; they are the regulator’s own framing of the risk a New Zealand resident accepts by going outside the regulated channel. A bettor who has won at an offshore brand and tried to withdraw knows whether the warning was conservative or accurate, and the rest of us read the warning for what it is.

A related cost is the money itself. Most offshore brands settle deposits and withdrawals in euros or US dollars by default, with New Zealand dollars as one of several options. The brand’s exchange rate is the punter’s exchange rate, and the spread is whatever the brand sets. A punter depositing $100 NZD at an unfavourable rate loses a few dollars before the bet is even placed; a punter withdrawing $500 NZD at the same kind of rate loses more. POLi at TAB NZ settles in NZD with no FX step; an offshore cashier settles wherever the brand settles, and the brand sets the terms.

Greyhound racing from 1 August 2026

Greyhound racing is closing in stages from 1 August 2026, and from that date offshore operators may not take bets on greyhound races either. The closure is a code-level decision that does not touch the legal architecture described above, but it does narrow what an offshore brand lawfully serves in New Zealand even if the betting prohibition were lifted in a future reform. A punter who follows a greyhound code has the clearest single reason to be inside TAB NZ in the year ahead.

Responsible gambling and the harm-minimisation layer

TAB NZ lists deposit limits, time-outs and self-exclusion in its apps, and an exclusion applies across both of its brands (TAB and Betcha). The age for TAB NZ betting is 18 — betting under 18 is an offence under section 89 of the Racing Industry Act 2020. Land-based casinos in New Zealand are 20; the two ages are not the same and the page does not merge them. TAB NZ accounts need a verified New Zealand address and ID, which is how the age and the location of the punter are confirmed before a deposit is taken.

Help is listed in the TAB NZ app: the free Gambling Helpline on 0800 654 655, the text line on 8006, and Safer Gambling Aotearoa. The helpline is the service bettors use, the text line is the same service for people who do not want to talk, and Safer Gambling Aotearoa is the public-facing programme. TAB NZ is required to keep the risks of problem and underage gambling minimised, which the page treats as the regulator’s instruction rather than the brand’s boast.

The Problem Gambling Levy at 0.74% runs from 1 July 2025 to 30 June 2028. The levy is paid by the operator; for the punter, the consequence is that the regulated channel funds part of the harm-minimisation work that supports the helpline and the public programme. The offshore brands pay online gambling duty into a different fiscal stream — 12% of profits since 1 July 2024, rising to 16% from 1 January 2027 — and the relationship between that duty and the gambling-harm sector is not the same.

There is no single national online-betting exclusion register. The register the 2026 online casino law will set up is for online casinos only and does not extend to sports or racing bets. A punter who self-excludes at TAB NZ excludes across both TAB NZ brands; a punter who wants the same protection from offshore brands needs to ask each brand directly, and the answer will be the brand’s own exclusion procedure rather than a centralised register.

The bookmakers a New Zealand punter actually meets

The two bookmakers below are the only online brands lawfully taking sports and racing bets from a person in New Zealand. Reading them as rival operators is the wrong frame; they are two shopfronts for TAB NZ, the monopoly operator. Both run on TAB NZ’s rails, with TAB NZ’s customer account, with TAB NZ’s deposit and withdrawal methods, and with the same set of responsible-gambling tools. The differences are the app, the brand palette, the markets on the homepage and the promos that surface on first open. This page treats them as the lawful shortlist, not as a head-to-head competition.

TAB

TAB is the older of TAB NZ’s two online brands and the one most New Zealand punters meet first. It takes fixed-odds and tote bets on the standard range of racing codes and sports, with a published set of bet types covering Win, Place, Each Way, Quinella, Exacta, Trifecta, First Four, Double, Treble, Daily Double, Running Double, Quaddie and Big6, plus Multis and Same Game Multis. The TAB NZ app includes Trackside live race streaming with in-app betting, racing form, Blackbook and Jockey Challenge tools, and a simplified wallet for deposits and withdrawals.

POLi is a deposit option at TAB. The deposit clears in seconds because POLi pulls directly from the punter’s bank account; withdrawals run on TAB NZ’s own bank rails and settle in New Zealand dollars. The minimums and any limits are TAB NZ’s own terms and are not stated in any statute the page is aware of. TAB NZ’s safer-gambling tools — deposit limits, time-outs and self-exclusion — apply on the TAB brand.

The verdict on TAB is that it is the regulated channel a New Zealand punter uses when the legal frame, the New Zealand dollar, and the regulator’s complaint procedure matter to them. It is not the cheapest place to bet in a comparative sense and it is not trying to be: the architecture is a regulated New Zealand bookmaker running a 25-year partnership with Entain, and the page reads TAB through that lens rather than as one option among many.

Betcha

Betcha is the second of TAB NZ’s two online brands, designed for the same market and operated by the same entity. It carries the same licensing as TAB, the same Racing Industry Act 2020 section 74AAA standing, the same age and ID requirements, and the same set of responsible-gambling tools — a TAB NZ exclusion covers both brands together, which is the feature a punter who has decided to step back will notice first. The brand presentation is different from TAB: the colour palette, the markets placed first on the homepage, the language of the marketing all push toward a younger, casual-punter audience rather than a racing-tradecode audience.

POLi is a deposit option at Betcha the same way it is at TAB. Deposits clear through POLi’s direct-debit flow, withdrawals run on TAB NZ’s bank rails and settle in New Zealand dollars. The two brands share the same deposit methods and the same payout architecture, because they are operated by the same group. Treating them as two bookmakers with separate deposit menus is a misreading of the law as much as of the products.

The verdict on Betcha is that a punter who wants the regulated channel in a more app-led wrapper than TAB offers gets the same legal protection, the same New Zealand dollar rails and the same responsible-gambling framework as on TAB. The differences are presentation, market framing and the promos TAB NZ chooses to surface on each brand — which is what a regulated bookmaker competing on user experience, rather than on odds, is supposed to look like.

Frequently asked questions

Can POLi be used on betting sites?

POLi is built for outgoing payments: a customer pays a merchant directly from a New Zealand bank account. Its presence on a bookmaker’s cashier depends on whether the bookmaker has integrated POLi. TAB NZ’s TAB and Betcha brands list POLi as a deposit method; offshore brands in this comparison do not. POLi withdrawals are not offered by most bookmakers, so the deposit method is rarely the same as the payout method.

Do any sports betting sites accept POLi?

TAB NZ’s TAB and Betcha do, and there is no public list of offshore bookmakers integrating POLi that this comparison puts beside them. The brands reviewed on this page — LegendPlay, Golden Panda, Sportaza, Rabona, Spinbara, Winz, BigClash, BillyBets, Megapari, Boomerang Bet, Thunderpick and Betninja — do not show POLi in their cashier. A punter who wants POLi needs to bet through a TAB NZ brand, or to use one of the alternative deposit methods those offshore brands list.

What betting apps use POLi?

The TAB NZ app lists POLi as a deposit option. Both TAB and Betcha run on the same TAB NZ account infrastructure, so a self-exclusion or deposit limit set on one applies to both. Beyond TAB NZ, no app in the comparison above shows POLi integrated at the cashier. Winz is crypto-first; Sportaza settles in NZD without POLi; the rest sit on cards and e-wallets.

Which payment methods does TAB NZ accept, and where are they listed?

TAB NZ lists its deposit methods on its own terms page and inside the app. POLi is one of them, alongside cards and bank transfer. There is no statutory payment rule for betting accounts in New Zealand, so the menu the punter sees is set by TAB NZ itself. Limits, minimums and any fees are TAB NZ’s own and are not stated in the Racing Industry Act 2020 or the Gambling Act 2003.

Which bookmaker may lawfully take sports and racing bets in New Zealand?

TAB NZ, through its two online brands TAB and Betcha, is the only operator permitted to take online sports and racing bets from a person in New Zealand from 28 June 2025, under section 74AAA of the Racing Industry Act 2020. No other brand is licensed for New Zealand betting. The Department of Internal Affairs told providers serving New Zealand to withdraw with immediate effect and warned residents about operators in jurisdictions with minimal consumer safeguards.

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