Sports betting with POLi in New Zealand — what's legal, who accepts it, what it costs

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

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18+ Only

POLi lets a New Zealand punter pay a merchant straight from internet banking without a card, and a steady stream of search traffic asks the obvious question: can it be used to back a multi on Saturday’s rugby, or to fund an account with one of the better-known overseas bookmakers? The short answer is that almost no one — at the level of legality — is taking bets from New Zealand at all right now, and the one operator that is, plus its sister brand, runs its own cashier rather than routing through POLi. The longer answer is what this page works through: what the law changed on 28 June 2025, who is left to bet with, how POLi actually moves money when it is used, and which offshore brands a New Zealand player meets regardless.

Current as of October 30, 2026; bookmaker status and licence claims checked against the Racing Industry Act 2020 as amended and the Department of Internal Affairs’ published position.

The two bookmakers a New Zealand punter can legally use

The first thing to settle is the narrowness of the legal field. Since the Racing Industry Amendment Act 2025 inserted section 74AAA, taking effect on 28 June 2025, no operator other than TAB New Zealand may offer racing or sports betting to a person in New Zealand — regardless of where that person is resident, where the site is incorporated, or where the bet is matched. The Department of Internal Affairs told providers serving New Zealand to withdraw with immediate effect. There is no second licence to apply for, no second licence to be granted, and no register of licensed bookmakers because there is only one lawful provider.

That single provider runs two online brands. Together they are the entire legal market, and a punter’s choice between them is a choice between two front doors to the same pool of bets, the same wallet and the same safer-gambling tools.

TAB — the original brand and the retail network

TAB is the older of the two online brands and the one tied to the physical betting outlets New Zealanders associate with the tote. It carries fixed-odds betting on racing and sport, the pari-mutuel pool (the dividend is set after the race rather than before it), the full catalogue of multi-leg bet types, and live betting on selected events. Its published betting rules name Win, Place, Each Way, Quinella, Exacta, Trifecta, First Four, Double, Treble, Daily Double, Running Double, Quaddie and Big6, and a Same Game Multi where every leg of the multi comes from a single match.

TAB’s app adds Trackside, which streams live racing with in-app betting layered on top, alongside racing form, Blackbook (a runner tracker the punter curates themselves) and Jockey Challenge. The wallet in the app is the same wallet that sits behind the website, and withdrawals go back to the same deposit method or to a New Zealand bank account.

Betcha — the online-only sister

Betcha is the second online brand of TAB New Zealand and the cleaner product of the pair. It runs the same betting catalogue, the same fixed-odds and pool products, and the same same-game multi builder, but it is positioned as the digital-only channel: no retail outlet, no counter service, no trackside streaming inherited from the older platform. For a punter whose bets are made entirely from a phone, Betcha is the more directly relevant of the two brands.

The two brands share an exclusion. A self-exclusion set on TAB also excludes Betcha, and vice versa, and that cross-brand application is required: there is no statutory dual-route that allows a punter who has excluded themselves open the other brand instead.

The Entain partnership and what changed in 2025

TAB’s online operation is run by Entain under a 25-year agreement signed in 2023. The deal gives Entain a 50/50 share of gross profits and commits at least $150m a year to TAB New Zealand for the first five years, with a separate one-off $100m payment from Entain to the racing sector. That revenue floor matters because it sets the minimum that flows back to the racing codes regardless of how the new-look TAB performs commercially, and it shapes the safer-gambling funding that sits alongside the bets. The 2025 amendment that closed the legal field to anyone other than TAB New Zealand was the regulatory counterpart to that deal: the partner was already chosen, and the law was then tightened around it.

What the law actually changed on 28 June 2025

Section 74AAA of the Racing Industry Act 2020 is short, but its consequences are wide. A person other than TAB New Zealand must not offer racing betting, sports betting, or other racing or sports betting to a person in New Zealand, irrespective of where that operator is incorporated or where the punter nominally resides. The breach is on the operator, not on the punter. Section 19(4) of the Gambling Act 2003, inserted in 2025, says an individual cannot be convicted for placing a bet with an offshore operator that is itself in breach — the legislature drew the line at the offer, not the click.

The Department of Internal Affairs administers that line. DIA has no offshore-blocking power: it does not geo-block websites, and it cannot order a New Zealand bank to refuse a payment to an offshore bookmaker. What it can do is warn the player, name the operator, and pursue the operator under New Zealand law where the operator has a New Zealand footprint. It also levies an online gambling duty on offshore operators supplying New Zealand residents — 12% of profits since 1 July 2024, rising to 16% from 1 January 2027 — but the payment of duty is not a clean licence, and a duty-paying operator is not made lawful by it.

What may be bet on under that monopoly is racing and sport. What may not be bet on through TAB New Zealand is anything that falls outside the Racing Industry Act 2020’s definition of sports betting: politics, novelty markets, financial-spread betting, and (the grey area) esports. The Online Casino Gambling Act 2026 does not license sports betting — it licenses online casino gambling only, and TAB New Zealand winning the right to apply for a casino licence does not extend the betting monopoly into casino territory.

The age threshold for a TAB account is 18. The age threshold for a New Zealand land-based casino is 20. The two numbers are not interchangeable, and the lower one is the one that governs a TAB New Zealand account. From 1 August 2026 greyhound racing closes in stages, and from that date offshore operators may not take bets on New Zealand greyhound races either.

POLi as a payment method, and why the legal bookmakers don’t take it

POLi is an online payment option that lets a customer pay a merchant directly from a New Zealand internet banking account. The customer’s bank login is the authentication; POLi does not itself capture usernames or passwords, and POLi states that transactions are protected by the customer’s bank security. The supported banks are ANZ, BNZ, ASB, Kiwibank, TSB, The Cooperative Bank and Westpac, with Heartland shown among the bank logos on POLi’s New Zealand site.

Two things are worth knowing about POLi before treating it as a normal deposit rail. The first is ownership: POLi was run by Australia Post and closed in Australia on 30 September 2023, with master distribution in New Zealand now sitting with Merco Ltd. The second is a bank-terms issue flagged by Consumer NZ: using POLi requires the customer to enter internet banking login details, and Consumer NZ reports that this breaches the terms of ASB, BNZ and Westpac, and may breach those of ANZ and Kiwibank. POLi’s director has said that no bank has taken a customer to task for POLi use and that POLi is safe; the consumer-advocate reading is that the breach is in the published terms of the bank rather than in any action a bank has taken.

POLi is a deposit rail, not a payout rail: it moves money from the customer’s bank to the merchant, not the other way. A bookmaker that takes POLi for deposits cannot use POLi for withdrawals — a winning bet has to come back to a bank account by some other method, typically a direct credit.

That matters because the two legal bookmakers — TAB and Betcha — do not list POLi among their deposit methods at all. Their cashier pages name the methods TAB New Zealand’s terms approve: debit card, direct debit from a New Zealand bank account, and the in-app wallet that handles the credit side. A New Zealand punter who wants POLi as a deposit method has to look outside the legal field, and that is exactly where the field closes.

The safer-gambling tools the legal bookmakers carry

TAB New Zealand’s safer-gambling tools live inside the NAP app and website: deposit limits, time-outs, and self-exclusion. A deposit limit is the daily, weekly or monthly ceiling the punter sets themselves; a time-out is a cooling-off pause of up to a defined window; a self-exclusion is a longer ban that, on TAB, runs across both TAB and Betcha. The exclusion crosses brands because the punter is excluding themselves from TAB New Zealand, not from a single product.

The harm-minimisation footing is funded through the Problem Gambling Levy, set at 0.74% and in force from 1 July 2025 to 30 June 2028. The levy is paid by TAB New Zealand and by the casino sector, and it underwrites the services a self-excluded punter is referred to: the Gambling Helpline on 0800 654 655, the text line on 8006, and Safer Gambling Aotearoa.

The legal bookmakers run inside that framework. The offshore bookmakers a New Zealand punter may encounter do not, and DIA’s published warning is the gap a punter who goes offshore is stepping into: minimal consumer safeguards, possible refusal to return unspent credits, and possible refusal to pay out large wins. None of those risks is hypothetical — DIA names them as the published expectation, not as a worst case.

Offshore bookmakers that show POLi in their cashier

New Zealand law does not block a punter from opening an offshore account, and the offshore operators a New Zealand punter meets do not, in most cases, refuse New Zealand sign-ups at the door. The brands below are listed because New Zealand searchers meet them when they look for POLi-accepting sportsbooks, and because describing them is part of describing the market. Each is not licensed in New Zealand, each is breaking New Zealand law by serving a person in New Zealand, and each is rated by the same criteria as the legal pair. They are not rivals to TAB, they are not “alternatives” in any regulated sense, and the comparison that follows is a cashier and terms comparison, not a recommendation.

Sportaza

Sportaza is a Soft2Bet-group sportsbook whose terms do not list New Zealand among the excluded jurisdictions in section 2.3, and the NZD appears in its withdrawal-limits table — NZ$1,000 per day and NZ$13,000 per month at account level 1, rising to NZ$3,000 per day and NZ$35,000 per month at level 5. The limits table matters because a New Zealand punter depositing in NZD hits a different ceiling at every level than a punter depositing in EUR, and the level a punter starts at is set by Sportaza rather than by the punter.

POLi appears on Sportaza’s cashier in some versions of the site. The cashier’s specifics — minimum deposit, fee, processing time — are operator-level and are set in Sportaza’s own payments page rather than in any rule that applies to the rail itself. A New Zealand punter using POLi on Sportaza is moving NZD from a New Zealand bank account to an account that operates under Curaçao rules, with New Zealand consumer protection unavailable if the payout stalls.

Rabona

Rabona launched on 23 December 2019 as the sixth sportsbook of the Soft2Bet group. Like its sister brand it sits inside the same Curaçao framework, and its cashier carries POLi among the regional payment options in the New Zealand and Australian versions of the site. The platform’s sportsbook covers mainstream football, basketball, tennis and the major American codes, with a secondary line in esports and virtuals, and the bonus structure layers a welcome offer on top of recurring reloads, acca boosts and a sports jackpot.

The tax on a Rabona win, for a New Zealand punter, is the same as the tax on any recreational gambling win: nothing in most cases, with the exception of a punter whose betting is a business in the eyes of Inland Revenue. The catch is that “no tax” is not the same as “no friction” — a payout that stalls, or that is denied on a bonus-clearing technicality, has no New Zealand complaints route behind it.

Megapari

Megapari is a heavier brand than Rabona, with a sportsbook, casino, live casino and a substantial esports product on a single account. Its bonus page lists a free bet worth 15% of the first deposit, a Free Bet Hour that returns 50% of football losses as a free bet, and a sports cashback product. The amounts on the Singapore version of Megapari’s site are shown in SGD; no New Zealand version of those terms was seen.

POLi appears on Megapari’s cashier, and a New Zealand punter can in principle fund an account that way. The unpaid question is whether Megapari’s terms, as written for the New Zealand version of the site, treat a POLi deposit as qualifying for the bonuses the Singapore version advertises — a point that has to be checked in the punter’s own account before a bonus is claimed.

LegendPlay, Golden Panda, Spinbara, Boomerang Bet, Thunderpick, BillyBets, BigClash, Betninja, Winz

These brands cluster around two models: a Soft2Bet-style multi-brand sportsbook-and-casino, and a crypto-first sportsbook. LegendPlay lists sports promotions named First Deposit Bonus, Weekly Reload Bonus, Sport Jackpot, Virtual Sports Excitement and Acca Boost. Golden Panda runs a sportsbook alongside esports, virtuals, casino, live casino, crash games and rewards. Spinbara advertises a 100% first-deposit bonus up to EUR 100 and a 100% sport crypto welcome bonus up to 200 USDT. Boomerang Bet runs casino, live casino and sportsbook on one account, with a 100% sports welcome up to EUR 100. Thunderpick advertises a 100% deposit bonus up to EUR 600 and recommends crypto for fast deposits; its terms set the minimum withdrawal at EUR 10 per transaction and charge a EUR 20 closing fee when an account is closed with a balance at or below EUR 20. BillyBets runs cashback and reload bonuses on sports, plus a coin shop where coins earned by depositing and betting can be swapped for free bets and free spins; its VIP programme has five levels. BigClash states that withdrawals are processed in about 1 to 3 days on the euro-priced version of the site. Betninja advertises a casino welcome of EUR 1,000 plus 100 free spins and a 100% sports match up to EUR 100. Winz accepts BTC, ETH, LTC, BCH, DOGE, USDT, BNB, ADA, TRX, XRP and SOL, takes deposits by connecting a crypto wallet, and advertises no deposit limits and instant withdrawals.

A New Zealand punter using any of these brands sits outside the legal field. POLi is a rail some of them show in their cashier; crypto is a rail most of them take. None of them is licensed in New Zealand, none of them is subject to the Racing Industry Act 2020, and none of them is bound by TAB New Zealand’s safer-gambling floor.

How POLi compares to the deposit rails the legal bookmakers do take

POLi’s place in this market is the rail an offshore bookmaker offers to soften the deposit experience for a New Zealand punter. It is not a rail the legal bookmakers need, because their cashier is built around the rails their own terms approve: debit card, direct debit from a New Zealand bank account, and the in-app wallet. The comparison below is a comparison of those rails against POLi on the offshore side, written for the punter choosing how to fund an account that is itself outside the law.

The legal pair differ from every other row on the table: the same operator sits behind them, the cashier is built around bank rails rather than POLi or crypto, and the terms come from TAB New Zealand’s own pages rather than from a Curaçao-licensed group. The offshore rows all share the same legal status — not licensed in New Zealand — and the difference between them is the cashier experience and the bonus ladder, not the regulatory footing.

What POLi actually does to a deposit

A POLi transaction takes a New Zealand punter from their bank’s website to the merchant’s payment confirmation in a single session, with the authentication happening inside the bank’s own login. POLi itself does not store card numbers, does not capture usernames or passwords, and does not hold the funds in its own account — the money moves from the punter’s bank to the merchant, with POLi as the messaging layer. The supported banks are ANZ, BNZ, ASB, Kiwibank, TSB, The Cooperative Bank and Westpac, with Heartland among the bank logos. The transaction is protected by the bank’s own security: POLi’s own page states it does not capture the login, and Consumer NZ’s reporting flags that the login is nevertheless entered in the course of the flow, with the consequence that the flow breaches the published terms of ASB, BNZ and Westpac and may breach those of ANZ and Kiwibank.

The minimum deposit, the fee (if any) and the processing time are set by the merchant, not by POLi. POLi’s role ends at the bank’s confirmation screen; what happens to the money after that is the merchant’s terms.

The deposit is one-way. POLi does not return money from a merchant to a punter; a payout from a bookmaker has to go through the merchant’s own withdrawal rail, which on a sportsbook is normally a direct credit to a New Zealand bank account, a card refund, or a crypto transfer. The punter choosing POLi for a deposit is choosing a rail that ends at the merchant, with the return trip booked separately.

The safer-gambling cost of going offshore

TAB New Zealand’s safer-gambling floor is regulator-supervised: deposit limits set by the punter inside the app, time-outs and self-exclusion that cut across TAB and Betcha, and an exclusion framework that points the punter at the Gambling Helpline on 0800 654 655 or the text line on 8006, with the funding coming from the Problem Gambling Levy. A punter whose betting is creeping past their own limits has a backstop they can switch on without leaving the app.

The offshore bookmaker a New Zealand punter reaches through POLi or crypto is under no equivalent obligation. Some of them carry their own responsible-gambling tools — a deposit limit, a self-exclusion button — but the obligation is operator-set, and the supervisor is the operator’s own regulator rather than the Department of Internal Affairs. DIA’s published warning is the floor the regulator sets: minimal consumer safeguards, possible refusal to return unspent credits, and possible refusal to pay out large wins. None of those is a hypothetical — DIA names them as the published expectation, not as a worst case.

The legal point and the personal-risk point are not the same. The legal point is that the offshore operator is breaking New Zealand law by serving the punter. The personal-risk point is that the punter has no New Zealand complaints route if the operator refuses a payout, and that a “bonus bet” on the offshore site carries its own wagering terms with no New Zealand supervision behind them. The two are worth keeping apart: the law is enforced against the operator, the consumer risk is borne by the punter.

Tax, levies and the price of a New Zealand win

Recreational gambling winnings are generally not taxable in New Zealand, and prize money from TAB horse, dog and trotting races is not taxable. A punter who bets as a business — that is, whose betting is on the income side of an enterprise rather than the personal side — is a different case and is advised to consult Inland Revenue or an accountant. A punter who bets casually does not owe tax on the winnings.

The operator-side levy is the Problem Gambling Levy, paid at 0.74% from 1 July 2025 to 30 June 2028. Offshore operators supplying New Zealand residents pay an online gambling duty of 12% of profits since 1 July 2024, rising to 16% from 1 January 2027. The duty does not make the offer lawful; it is a tax on the operator’s New Zealand-derived profit, not a permission slip. The point-of-consumption charge on offshore racing and sports bets ceased on 30 June 2026.

For the punter, the cost of a win is the bookmaker’s margin — the cut the bookmaker takes on every market — plus any fee the rail charges. POLi itself does not charge the punter a fee in New Zealand; the merchant’s page is where any fee may appear. The bank-terms issue Consumer NZ flags is not a price either; it is a contract question between the punter and the bank, and the bank’s published position is the one that governs the relationship.

Choosing between the legal pair and the offshore field

The narrowness of the legal field is the point. A New Zealand punter who wants to bet on the All Blacks, the Black Caps, the Warriors or Super Rugby Pacific and to do so under New Zealand law has a two-row shortlist: TAB and Betcha. The choice between them is a choice of front end, not a choice of operator: the wallet is shared, the safer-gambling tools are shared, the self-exclusion crosses brands, and the catalogue of bet types is the same.

The wider field is wider, but it is also outside the law. A punter who wants a Same Game Multi on a less-covered league, a deeper prop market, or a sportsbook with a heavier bonus ladder will find those products on the offshore brands, and will find POLi or crypto waiting in the cashier. The trade is the one DIA names: minimal consumer safeguards, possible refusal to return unspent credits, and possible refusal to pay out large wins. The punter choosing offshore is choosing a different product, a different rail, and a different regulator — and is choosing, by the same move, to be outside the law the punter’s own country has drawn.

The choice is not “TAB or nothing”. The choice is “TAB and Betcha, under New Zealand law, with the safer-gambling tools that come with it” or “the offshore field, outside New Zealand law, with the consumer-risk floor DIA has published.” Each punter makes that trade on their own terms, and each punter sees a different value in the trade. The page is the description of the trade, not the verdict on it.

Where POLi fits in the next year

POLi is unlikely to land in TAB New Zealand’s cashier in the short term. TAB’s deposit methods are set in TAB New Zealand’s own terms, and the terms name debit card, direct debit and the in-app wallet; POLi is not among them. The wider Entain footprint — Entain runs TAB’s online operation — does not currently route POLi on the New Zealand cashier, and the integration cost of a new deposit rail on the legal bookmaker’s cashier has to be set against the regulatory cost of opening the rail to a New Zealand-specific payment flow.

POLi’s place in the offshore market is the place it has had for years: a regional deposit rail that softens the experience for a New Zealand or Australian punter, with the bank’s authentication doing the heavy lifting. The bank-terms issue Consumer NZ flags is not new and is not closing. The Merco Ltd takeover of New Zealand POLi distribution after Australia Post closed POLi in Australia on 30 September 2023 is the structural change in the rail itself.

The market framing is the framing this page has carried throughout: the legal bookmakers are legal, the offshore bookmakers are not, and POLi is a rail that the offshore bookmakers carry more often than the legal ones do. That is the choice the page has put in front of the punter, and that is the choice the punter makes.

Frequently asked questions

Can POLi be used on betting sites in New Zealand?

POLi is a deposit-only rail that pays a merchant from a New Zealand internet banking account, and it is accepted by a number of offshore sportsbooks in their service accounts. The two legal New Zealand bookmakers — TAB and Betcha — do not list POLi among their deposit methods at all; their cashier takes debit card, direct debit and the in-app wallet. A New Zealand punter using POLi is using it on an offshore bookmaker, which is breaking New Zealand law on the operator side. POLi itself does not charge a fee, and the transaction is protected by the customer’s bank security; the supported banks are ANZ, BNZ, ASB, Kiwibank, TSB, The Cooperative Bank and Westpac.

Do any sports betting sites accept POLi from New Zealand customers?

Several offshore sportsbooks accept POLi on their cashier and do not block New Zealand sign-ups at the door — Sportaza, Rabona, Megapari, LegendPlay, Golden Panda, Spinbara, Boomerang Bet, BillyBets, BigClash and Betninja are among them. None of them is licensed in New Zealand, and none of them is a lawful option under the Racing Industry Act 2020 as amended in 2025. The two lawful bookmakers — TAB and Betcha — do not accept POLi. Using POLi on an offshore bookmaker moves money from a New Zealand bank account to an account operating under a Curaçao or other overseas licence, with no New Zealand complaints route behind a payout that stalls.

What betting apps take POLi?

POLi appears in the cashier of several offshore betting apps, including the Soft2Bet-group apps (Sportaza, Rabona, Boomerang Bet, LegendPlay) and the multi-brand apps around them (Spinbara, Golden Panda, BillyBets, BigClash, Betninja). Crypto-first apps such as Winz and Thunderpick do not take POLi at all and instead route deposits through a connected crypto wallet. The legal New Zealand apps — the TAB app and the Betcha app — do not take POLi; their deposit methods are debit card, direct debit and the in-app wallet. A New Zealand punter installing an app to use POLi is installing an offshore app, and is betting outside the legal field.

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

TAB New Zealand’s accepted deposit methods are debit card, direct debit from a New Zealand bank account, and the in-app wallet, and the full list sits on TAB New Zealand’s own payments page. Withdrawals go back to the same deposit method or to a New Zealand bank account by direct credit. POLi is not on the list. The cashier’s specifics — minimum deposit, processing time, any fee — are set on that page and not by the rail itself; the terms are TAB New Zealand’s own, and they apply to both TAB and Betcha because both brands sit behind the same wallet.

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

TAB New Zealand is the only provider lawfully offering racing and sports betting to people in New Zealand, and it runs two online brands: TAB and Betcha. Section 74AAA of the Racing Industry Act 2020, inserted by the Racing Industry Amendment Act 2025 and in force from 28 June 2025, prohibits any other person from offering racing or sports betting to a person in New Zealand. There is no second licence to apply for and no register of licensed bookmakers, because there is only one lawful provider. The age for a TAB account is 18, and account opening requires a verified New Zealand address and ID.

What does a player lose by betting with a bookmaker that has no New Zealand licence?

A player betting with an offshore bookmaker loses the New Zealand regulator’s backstop: there is no Department of Internal Affairs complaints route, no cross-brand self-exclusion framework, and no Problem Gambling Levy-funded helpline sitting behind the operator’s own tools. The Department of Internal Affairs publishes the consumer-risk floor plainly — the same safeguards and credit-refusal risks DIA warns against elsewhere. The law targets the operator, not the player; section 19(4) of the Gambling Act 2003 says a player cannot be convicted for placing a bet with an offshore operator in breach of section 74AAA. The legal cost is the operator’s; the consumer-risk cost is the player’s, and is borne by the player alone.

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