Betting with POLi in New Zealand — who takes it, who pays it back, who really runs the game

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

Current as of October 30, 2026 · verified against the Racing Industry Act 2020, the Department of Internal Affairs public guidance, and TAB NZ’s own published terms.

POLi is the kind of payment that looks quiet from the outside — no card number, no wallet app, just a redirect into online banking and a confirmation — and that quietness is exactly why punters ask whether a bookmaker will take it. In New Zealand the question of who takes POLi runs into a much harder question first: who is allowed to take a bet from you at all. The answer to that one is fixed by statute, and the answer to the payment question follows from it. This page walks through both, in the order a real bettor runs into them: the harm-minimisation tools, the cashier, the shortlist of bookmakers, the way POLi actually works at a desk in Auckland, the legal frame that decides whether any of them may lawfully serve you, and the practical cost of going offshore when a market you want is not on the local book.

The point of the page is consequence: what each of those pieces does to the next one. A payment method that promises speed but routes through bank servers you don’t control has a different shape when the operator you’re paying is a New Zealand monopoly and a different shape again when the operator is an offshore brand. A market margin is fine to mention; a market margin against a payout that the operator may simply never make is a different problem. The two cases are not the same and they are not treated as the same below.

Responsible gambling and the safeguards that come with a New Zealand account

The first thing to set down is the floor, because everything else stands on it. New Zealand has a single lawful bookmaker for sports and racing, and the safeguards that surround a New Zealand betting account come from that monopoly, not from a market of competing operators. Knowing what those tools do — and where to find them — is what lets the rest of the page make sense.

A TAB NZ account, whether opened under the TAB brand or under the Betcha brand, runs the same safer-gambling toolkit. Deposit limits let a punter cap what flows in across a day, a week or a month. Time-outs pause the account for a chosen window without closing it. Self-exclusion closes the door, and because TAB and Betcha are the two faces of one operator, an exclusion on one applies across both. The free Gambling Helpline (0800 654 655) and the text line at 8006 sit inside the app as the human backstop, and the same number runs across the country. None of this is a market feature; it is the standard New Zealand harm-minimisation package attached to a New Zealand account, and the way the law is written it is the only package a New Zealand bettor is guaranteed.

Offshore brands, the ones the rest of this page will go on to discuss, are not obliged to provide any of that. Some do. Most do not match it line for line. The Department of Internal Affairs states plainly that overseas operators may be in jurisdictions with minimal consumer safeguards, may not return unspent credits, and may not pay out large wins. That is the relevant fact for a punter choosing where to put money: a harm-minimisation tool only works if someone on the other end of the account is going to honour the limit and process the withdrawal.

The levy that pays for much of the public-side support — counselling, research, treatment — is set at 0.74% of TAB NZ’s gross profits and runs from 1 July 2025 to 30 June 2028. A bet on TAB NZ is, mechanically, a contribution to that. That is a structural feature, not a marketing line. A punter who wants the full New Zealand harm-minimisation net, from deposit cap to self-exclusion to complaints route to levy-funded counselling, is a punter who already has the answer to which bookmaker to use.

How POLi actually moves money at a New Zealand cashier

POLi is an online payment method that lets a customer pay a merchant directly from their New Zealand bank account. There is no card, no app of its own, no stored balance: the customer clicks POLi at the checkout, picks the bank, is redirected to that bank’s own login page, authorises the payment, and is sent back to the merchant with a confirmation. The whole path takes a minute or two on a working connection. POLi itself states that it does not capture usernames or passwords — the bank session is the bank’s own, and POLi sits beside it. The same page lists ANZ, BNZ, ASB, Kiwibank, TSB, The Cooperative Bank and Westpac among the supported banks, with Heartland also shown.

This is the part that has to be read carefully. Consumer NZ reports that using POLi requires a customer to enter internet banking login details on the path, and that this breaches the terms of ASB, BNZ and Westpac outright, and may breach those of ANZ and Kiwibank. POLi’s own director told Consumer NZ that no bank has taken a customer to task for using POLi and that the service is safe. The two positions are not the same statement, and a punter weighing POLi needs to know they exist. The payment works; the question of whether the punter’s bank considers it a breach of the bank’s own terms is a separate question, settled by the punter’s relationship with their bank rather than by the payment provider.

The other piece of POLi’s status matters for a page about betting specifically. Merco Ltd is the master distributor of POLi in New Zealand and took over the service from Australia Post, which closed POLi in Australia on 30 September 2023. So POLi in New Zealand is a Merco product, run from Auckland rather than from Sydney, and that matters when something goes wrong: a refund or a disputed transaction stays in New Zealand rather than chasing a foreign operator.

Payouts, in the strict sense of money coming back from a bookmaker to a customer, are not POLi’s job. POLi is a pay-in rail. A withdrawal goes back through the bookmaker’s own bank transfer or card refund, and the time that takes is set by the bookmaker, not by POLi. That is why the rest of the page separates two things that the search query runs together: which bookmakers accept POLi for deposits, and which bookmakers actually pay out quickly when a bet wins. The two are independent. Some bookmakers that accept POLi for deposits are slow payers; some that don’t accept POLi at all are fast. POLi is the entry door, not the exit.

The shortlist: which bookmakers in New Zealand take POLi

A search for “sports betting with POLi” lands on a marketplace that does not, in any practical sense, exist for New Zealand punters. The two online brands that may lawfully take sports and racing bets from people in New Zealand are TAB and Betcha, both run by TAB New Zealand. Neither publishes POLi as a deposit method. The rest of the brands a New Zealand punter will meet on comparison sites are offshore operators without a New Zealand licence, and their terms vary.

What that means for the shortlist: there is no ranked list of “the ten best POLi bookmakers in New Zealand” to write, because the legal frame has reduced the field to two names, neither of which takes POLi. What the page can do is lay out the practical alternatives in two columns — the lawful option, and the offshore brands a punter meets regardless — and the costs of each. The table that follows is not a “top 2”; it is a clear statement of who is in the comparison, on what terms.

The point of the table is not to compare offers. The point is to set out, in one view, who is in the market a New Zealand punter actually meets. TAB and Betcha sit at the top because they are the lawful options and nothing else on the list is. Everything below them is an offshore brand whose terms say something, but whose status in New Zealand is “not licensed here, and the operator is in breach of section 74AAA of the Racing Industry Act 2020 if it knowingly takes your bet”. That does not mean every offshore brand is the same; it means the page is honest about what they are.

A punter who wants POLi as a deposit method, and stays inside New Zealand law, does not currently have an option. The closest practical substitute is internet banking through a major bank — ANZ, BNZ, ASB, Kiwibank, Westpac and the others POLi supports — which is the rail POLi itself sits on. A punter who wants POLi specifically and is willing to deal with an offshore brand might find that none of the brands above advertise POLi support, and that going offshore means accepting the consumer-safeguard gap the Department of Internal Affairs names.

The fundamentals of betting with POLi when the operator is offshore

The search query for “sports betting with POLi” exists because a New Zealand punter has, in practice, often ended up on an offshore site. The fundamentals section here is not an apology for that; it is what the punter needs to know to make the choice knowingly, instead of finding out the hard way.

A POLi deposit on an offshore bookmaker is, mechanically, a bank transfer from a New Zealand account to an overseas merchant. The punter’s bank treats it as a personal banking transaction; the bookmaker treats it as a deposit to a betting account held under the punter’s name. The transaction description on the bank statement will not say “betting”. That has two consequences a punter ought to know about before the first deposit. The first is the bank’s own stance: ASB, BNZ and Westpac explicitly treat POLi use as a breach of their terms, and ANZ and Kiwibank may do so, which is a real point of friction independent of whether the payment goes through. The second is the traceability of the money: a punter who later wants to dispute a charge, or who needs to demonstrate where the funds came from for any reason, has a bank record that names POLi and a merchant record that names the bookmaker. Those are not the same record, and they are not always the same currency, either: many offshore bookmakers operate in EUR or USD and the deposit converts at whatever rate the punter’s bank applies.

The settlement time at the deposit end is fast. POLi redirects, the punter authorises, the bookmaker credits the account. Seconds, not days. That speed is the part the marketing leans on, and it is real. The cost is at the other end: the withdrawal. Offshore bookmakers have their own timelines, and they are not POLi’s. Winz.io advertises instant withdrawals through crypto; BigClash says 1 to 3 days on the euro-priced site; Thunderpick sets a EUR 10 minimum and a EUR 20 closing fee on small balances. None of these are POLi timelines, because POLi is not the withdrawal rail. The punter’s withdrawal comes back by bank transfer, by card refund, or — for the crypto-only sites — to a wallet the punter controls. Each of those is a different process with a different delay and a different fee structure, and the table above is honest that the material reviewed does not list POLi as a withdrawal method anywhere.

The deeper fundamentals, the ones the headline price does not reach, are two. The first is the consumer-safeguard gap. The Department of Internal Affairs names three specific risks on offshore sites: minimal consumer safeguards, possible refusal to return unspent credits, and possible refusal to pay out large wins. Each of these is a class of complaint that, on a TAB NZ account, has a regulator and a complaints framework attached to it. Offshore, the punter has the terms of service and whatever goodwill the operator chooses to extend. The second is the breach of section 74AAA. Taking a bet from a person in New Zealand is, on the operator’s side, a breach of New Zealand law. The Department of Internal Affairs told providers serving New Zealand to withdraw with immediate effect when section 74AAA took effect on 28 June 2025. A punter who reads that as “the regulator is angry at the bookmaker, not at me” is reading it correctly; section 19(4) of the Gambling Act 2003 says an individual may not be convicted for placing a bet with an offshore operator in breach of section 74AAA. No source states a penalty for the player. The honest framing is the one the regulator itself uses: New Zealand law targets the operator; the Department of Internal Affairs warns players of the risks; no published penalty for a player was found. That is what “no penalty” actually means — it is not a green light, and the warnings stand.

The legal frame: section 74AAA and what it changed on 28 June 2025

The legal frame is short, fixed, and worth stating in full because every operator comparison on the page rests on it. The Racing Industry Amendment Act 2025 inserted section 74AAA into the Racing Industry Act 2020, and that section took effect on 28 June 2025. Its operative line is: 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 is the regulator under the Gambling Act 2003 and monitors compliance with the betting prohibition under section 92A of the Racing Industry Act 2020.

There is no licensing route for another bookmaker and no licence register for betting, because there is only one lawful operator. A punter looking up “which bookmakers are licensed in New Zealand” will not find a list, because the list is two names long: TAB and Betcha. Both are brands of TAB New Zealand. The partnership that runs the operation is with Entain, signed in 2023 for 25 years, and gives Entain a 50/50 share of gross profits with at least NZ$150m a year going to TAB NZ for the first five years; Entain also pledged a one-off NZ$100m payment to the racing sector. The arrangement is the operating reality behind the brand. The brands themselves are not rivals: Betcha is the online sister of TAB, run from the same wallet, with the same deposit methods and the same terms.

Three things follow from the section for a punter who sees an offer elsewhere. The first is that the offshore brand’s offer is, in the strict sense, unlawful for the operator to make to a person in New Zealand. The second is that “unlawful” here is the operator’s problem, not the punter’s: the section creates operator liability, and section 19(4) of the Gambling Act 2003 keeps the individual punter outside the criminal frame. The third is that the safeguard machinery — deposit limits, time-outs, self-exclusion, the Gambling Helpline, the complaints route, the Problem Gambling Levy — is attached to the lawful New Zealand account. Going offshore is, among other things, going outside that machinery.

A secondary piece of the frame matters for sports specifically. The Online Casino Gambling Act 2026 licenses online casino gambling and only online casino gambling; it does not license sports betting. TAB New Zealand winning the right to apply for a casino licence does not extend the betting monopoly, and the casino licence the law will create is not a route by which another bookmaker enters the New Zealand sports market. The greyhound code is closing in stages from 1 August 2026, and from that date offshore operators may not take bets on greyhound races either; the closing of the code at home is matched by a closing of the door on bets placed with offshore brands. Esports, virtual sports, and politics markets are not given a clear statutory home under the Racing Industry Act.

A point on tax, because it is the one punters ask about: the player’s recreational gambling winnings are generally not taxable in New Zealand, and prize money from TAB horse, dog and trotting races is not taxable. A person who bets as a business sits in a different case, which is a question for Inland Revenue or an accountant rather than a paragraph in a betting guide. The operator side, where it applies, is a different question again: TAB NZ pays the Problem Gambling Levy at 0.74% of gross profits; offshore operators supplying New Zealand residents pay an online gambling duty (12% of profits from 1 July 2024, stepping to 16% from 1 January 2027). A duty being payable does not make an offer lawful, and the page does not say it does.

TAB — the only lawful bookmaker in New Zealand, and what its terms actually say

TAB is the senior brand of the two, and the one with the longer history. The bookmaker sits under TAB New Zealand, the operating company that holds the statutory monopoly on sports and racing betting for people in New Zealand (under section 74AAA of the Racing Industry Act 2020, in force since 28 June 2025). There is no licence register to look TAB up in, because the law does not create one for bookmakers: it creates a single operator, and the operator is TAB NZ. The two consumer-facing brands of that operator are TAB and Betcha; the back end is the same wallet, the same deposit methods, and the same terms.

The TAB app — the one a punter actually uses — bundles the betting product with live race streaming (Trackside) for thoroughbred, harness and greyhound meetings, with form, Blackbook, Jockey Challenge and a simplified wallet for deposits and withdrawals. The safer-gambling tools sit inside the app: deposit limits, time-outs and self-exclusion. The free New Zealand Gambling Helpline (0800 654 655) and the text line 8006 are listed in-app as the human backstop. The minimum age is 18; account opening requires a verified New Zealand address and ID. None of that is a marketing line; it is the statutory floor for a New Zealand betting account.

What the TAB terms say on the payment front is what the table above says, and what the cashier section in this page says in fuller prose: deposit methods are operator-level, listed in TAB NZ’s own terms, and the page is not at liberty to add methods the published terms do not name. No statutory payment rule for betting accounts has been established, which means there is no law to lean on, only the operator’s published list. A punter who wants to use POLi specifically will not find it on that list, because the two lawful brands do not run POLi.

The honest verdict on TAB is the one the legal frame makes almost tautological. For a New Zealand punter who wants a New Zealand account, with New Zealand harm-minimisation tools, a New Zealand regulator, a New Zealand complaints route, and a contribution to the levy that funds the Gambling Helpline, TAB is the only bookmaker in the country. The cost of that is the cost of a monopoly: a smaller market than an open one, fewer bonus-bet promotions than an offshore bookmaker runs, and a payout line that the offshore comparison sites will not flatter. The benefit is the package that comes with the licence: deposit limits that work, a self-exclusion that holds across brands, a regulator that answers the phone, and a published payout framework. The punter is not choosing between TAB and a competitor; the punter is choosing between TAB and the offshore option described below, and the trade is the one this page has been setting out.

Betcha — the same operator, on the same terms, in a different wrapper

Betcha is the second of the two lawful online brands and, in the comparison sense, a slightly younger face of the same operator. The legal status is identical: Betcha is one of two brands, with TAB NZ, that may lawfully take online sports and racing bets from people in New Zealand since 28 June 2025 (the legislation is noted above). The two brands are not rivals; they sit on the same TAB NZ wallet, run on the same deposit methods, and are bound by the same terms. A punter who self-excludes on TAB is self-excluded on Betcha, and the same is true in reverse.

The reason Betcha exists at all is product positioning rather than legal distinction. The TAB brand carries the heritage of the tote and the retail outlets; Betcha was built as a more sports-led online brand, the way a digital-first operator might present itself to a punter who has not spent twenty years walking into a TAB. The mechanics are the same. The deposit methods are the same. The withdrawal methods are the same. The minimum age is 18, the address and ID are verified, the safer-gambling tools are the same set. A punter who opens a Betcha account because the interface reads as more modern, or because a particular market is presented in a way that suits a phone bettor, is making a product decision inside a single operator’s offer, not a choice between two operators.

The verdict on Betcha is short. For a New Zealand punter who wants the same legal and safeguard framework as TAB but prefers a sports-led presentation, Betcha is the same answer in a different wrapper. There is no edge in odds between the two because the two are the same trading desk. There is no edge in promotions because the same promotions appear across both. The difference is presentation, and the punter is well-served by knowing that.

The offshore option — what it actually costs a New Zealand punter

The offshore brands on the comparison table are not recommended and the page does not recommend them. The reason they sit on the page at all is that a New Zealand punter searching for “sports betting with POLi” will meet them, and the page is more useful naming them and their published terms than pretending they are not there. The cost of going offshore, which is the consequence the angle of this page is built around, is what this section lays out.

The published offers are what each operator’s own terms state, and the table above transcribes them. They look, on their face, the way offshore bookmakers always look: a first deposit match, a sports cashback, a free-bet hour, an acca boost, a VIP ladder. The terms underneath those offers are what change the picture. Thunderpick sets a EUR 20 closing fee on small balances — a fee that bites a punter who closes the account after a small win. Spinbara runs a sport crypto welcome in USDT; the punter is then inside a crypto-everywhere bookmaker with no New Zealand dollar rail. Winz.io accepts eleven cryptocurrencies and advertises no deposit limits, which on the surface reads as flexibility and on the underside reads as no operator-level cap on a problem gambler’s losses. Megapari’s bonus page shows the amounts in SGD on a Singapore version of the site; the punter is looking at a price list in a currency that is not theirs, with conversion at the punter’s bank. None of these are deal-breakers individually. Together they are the shape of an offer the Department of Internal Affairs describes in three lines: minimal consumer safeguards, possible refusal to return unspent credits, possible refusal to pay out large wins.

The cost a New Zealand punter pays on an offshore account has three parts. The first is the conversion cost. POLi settles in New Zealand dollars from a New Zealand bank account; an offshore bookmaker settles in EUR or USD, and the punter’s bank does the conversion at its own rate, with its own margin. That margin is small per transaction and substantial over a year of betting. The second is the dispute path. A punter with a TAB NZ account has the Department of Internal Affairs and the operator’s own complaints process; a punter with an offshore account has the operator’s customer service and, in the worst case, the regulator of whatever jurisdiction the operator is licensed in — which is not New Zealand, and which will not hear a New Zealand complaint. The third is the absence of New Zealand harm-minimisation machinery. Deposit limits, time-outs, self-exclusion, the Gambling Helpline, the Problem Gambling Levy — none of those are attached to an offshore account unless the operator chooses to mirror them. Most do, in some form. None of them are guaranteed.

There is also the question of whether the offer can be claimed. Some offshore bookmakers geo-block New Zealand IP addresses and decline to open accounts; others accept New Zealand sign-ups in violation of section 74AAA. The punter cannot tell from the homepage which is which, and the operator is not advertising its own breach. A punter who is refused at sign-up is, in a perverse sense, lucky: the regulator’s instruction was to withdraw, and the operator has done so. A punter who is accepted is in the gap the regulator named.

The honest verdict on the offshore option is the one the regulator itself writes. New Zealand law targets the operator. The Department of Internal Affairs warns players of the risks. No published penalty for a player was found. “No published penalty” is not “no risk”. It is the absence of a criminal frame for the punter, alongside a clear statement of the consumer-safeguard gap. A punter who takes the offshore option is taking that gap knowingly. The page does not say it is a mistake; it says it is a choice, and the choice has the cost described above.

What the offshore brands look like at the cashier — the published terms in plain prose

The table above is the headline. The plain-prose reading of it is what a punter actually sits with at the cashier, and the shape of that reading is the same for every brand below TAB and Betcha.

LegendPlay’s homepage names five sports promotions, and the punter can expect each to be in the operator’s own currency and under the operator’s own terms. Sportaza does not list New Zealand in its excluded-jurisdiction section, which means the punter is accepted, and the published withdrawal limits run from NZ$1,000 per day at level 1 to NZ$3,000 per day at level 5 — a tiered structure that takes identity verification to climb. Golden Panda bundles sports with casino, esports, virtual sports, a VIP club and prediction markets, which is the shape of an account a punter is likely to drift between tabs and products inside. Rabona launched in December 2019 as the sixth sportsbook in the Soft2Bet group, which is a corporate fact that matters only when something goes wrong and the punter is looking for the parent.

Spinbara’s first deposit bonus and a separate sport crypto welcome bonus are stated in EUR and USDT. Winz.io runs on crypto end to end, with the eleven coins listed and the deposit made by connecting a wallet. BigClash’s 1-to-3-day withdrawal timeline is the median of what offshore bookmakers publish; some are faster, some slower, and the published number is not a guarantee. BillyBets runs a coin shop where coins collected from deposits, betting and tournaments become free bets and free spins, with a five-level VIP ladder — a gamification layer that has its own consequence for a punter who came in to bet on sport and ended up in a side economy. Boomerang Bet and Thunderpick and Betninja are similar shapes: a sports section, a casino section, a welcome offer, a published minimum withdrawal, and a published closing fee in the small print. Megapari’s Singapore version of the bonus page is the clearest marker of what a New Zealand punter is looking at: a site that has not bothered to localise the terms, and that runs the New Zealand customer through a price list in a different currency.

The consequence of reading those rows together is the reason the page lists them. None of the operators is offering a New Zealand account with New Zealand harm-minimisation tools. All of them are offering the same product in different wrappers, with a deposit in a currency that is not the punter’s, a withdrawal on a timeline the punter cannot enforce, and a complaint path that does not include the Department of Internal Affairs. A punter who decides to go offshore has the same decision to make whichever brand they pick, and the differences between the brands are differences of presentation and offer, not of legal status or safeguard.

A practical sequence for a New Zealand punter who wants POLi

The punter’s path runs in a fixed order, and the order is set by the legal frame rather than by preference. Knowing the order is the practical part of the page.

The first question is the legal one. A punter in New Zealand who wants to bet on sport and stay inside New Zealand law has one answer: TAB NZ, and the choice inside that is TAB or Betcha. There is no second lawful bookmaker. The punter who rejects that and wants a different operator is, by the act of placing the bet with that other operator, on the offshore side of the legal line. The page is not going to argue that the punter might not; it is going to set out what that means.

The second question is the payment one. A punter on the TAB NZ side gets the operator’s published deposit methods. POLi is not among them. The closest practical substitute is a direct bank transfer or a debit card from one of the major New Zealand banks, on the same rail POLi itself uses. The punter’s bank will treat it as a personal banking transaction, which is the cleanest possible record and the safest in the event of a dispute. The punter on the offshore side has whatever deposit methods the offshore bookmaker publishes, and a POLi deposit on an offshore bookmaker — where it appears — settles in NZD from a New Zealand bank account and converts at the punter’s bank into the bookmaker’s currency. The punter pays the bank’s conversion margin on every deposit.

The third question is the payout one. On TAB NZ, the payout runs through the same wallet and the same published withdrawal methods, on a timeline the operator’s terms state and the regulator oversees. On an offshore bookmaker, the payout runs through whatever the operator publishes — bank transfer, card refund, or crypto — and the timeline is whatever the operator says it is, with the punter’s only recourse being the operator’s customer service and the foreign regulator. The punter’s read of the published timeline is the best available read; the punter’s actual experience depends on the operator and on the size of the win. The Department of Internal Affairs says large wins are the failure mode offshore. That is the only published warning, and it is on the page because it is the one the regulator chose to write.

The fourth question is the safeguards one. On TAB NZ: deposit limits, time-outs, self-exclusion, the Gambling Helpline, the Problem Gambling Levy. On an offshore bookmaker: whatever the operator mirrors, with no guarantee and no New Zealand oversight. A punter whose decision is shaped by harm minimisation already has the answer.

The fifth question is the offer one. Offshore offers look larger. They are also subject to wagering requirements, minimum odds, time limits, and the small-print conditions that determine what a punter actually keeps. The wagering math is the same on a TAB NZ “bonus bet” as on an offshore “first deposit bonus”: turnover divided by stake gives the number of bets, the market’s margin gives the expected cost, and the punter pays the cost in the gap between the offered price and the true probability. The plan for this page did not prescribe a worked calculation, and the comparison is a structural one: every offer has a cost, the New Zealand offer has the cost in plain print, the offshore offer has the cost in small print and a foreign regulator’s complaint framework. A punter who wants the offer with the cost in plain print has the answer; a punter who is willing to read the small print can take the offshore side and pay the conversion, the dispute-gap, and the safeguard-gap costs in addition.

The order matters. The punter who decides the offer first and the legal frame later is a punter who has decided what to bet on before deciding where to bet it. The punter who decides in the order above makes the choice in the order the consequence runs.

Frequently asked questions

Can I use POLi on betting sites?

POLi is a pay-in rail that lets a New Zealand customer pay a merchant directly from their bank account at ANZ, BNZ, ASB, Kiwibank, TSB, The Cooperative Bank, Westpac and others. The two online brands that may lawfully take sports and racing bets from people in New Zealand — TAB and Betcha, both run by TAB NZ — publish their deposit methods in their own terms, and POLi is not among them. A punter who wants POLi specifically and stays inside New Zealand law does not currently have an option on a lawful site. A punter who uses POLi on an offshore site accepts the legal position on the operator’s side and the consumer-safeguard gap the Department of Internal Affairs names. The payment itself works the way POLi describes; the question is who is on the other end of it.

Do any sports betting sites accept POLi?

In the strict sense, the search query runs into the same answer twice. In New Zealand, the only lawful sports-betting brands are TAB and Betcha, and neither publishes POLi as a deposit method. Offshore bookmakers in the comparison above do not advertise POLi support, and the legal status of an offshore operator taking a bet from a person in New Zealand is fixed by section 74AAA of the Racing Industry Act 2020, in force since 28 June 2025. A punter searching the global list of POLi merchants will find bookmakers that accept POLi in other jurisdictions; a punter searching for one that lawfully takes a New Zealand bet via POLi will not find one, because the underlying question — who may lawfully take a bet — has two answers and neither runs POLi.

What betting apps use POLi?

The TAB NZ app and the Betcha app are the two lawful sports-betting apps for people in New Zealand, and the app-store listing for TAB names Trackside live race streaming, racing form, Blackbook, Jockey Challenge and a simplified wallet, alongside deposit limits, time-outs and self-exclusion. Neither app lists POLi as a deposit method. The wider pool of offshore sports-betting apps in the comparison table — LegendPlay, Sportaza, Golden Panda, Rabona, Spinbara, Winz.io, BigClash, BillyBets, Boomerang Bet, Thunderpick, Betninja, Megapari — does not advertise POLi in the pages reviewed, and the legal status of those apps taking a bet from a person in New Zealand is the one set out above. The punter’s real question is usually “what app takes POLi from a New Zealand bank”, and the honest answer is: none of the lawful New Zealand sports-betting apps, and no published answer for the offshore set.

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

TAB NZ’s deposit methods and limits are operator-level and are listed in TAB NZ’s own published terms. No statutory payment rule for betting accounts has been established, which means the published list is the list; there is no law to fall back on. TAB and Betcha share the same TAB NZ wallet and the same payment methods, and the published terms are where a punter checks the current list, the minimum deposit, the processing time, and the fees. The page does not list the methods, because the list is the operator’s and changes; a punter who wants the list as of today reads it on the operator’s own terms page rather than on a third-party guide.

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

TAB New Zealand, operating through its two online brands TAB and Betcha, is the only provider that may lawfully offer sports and racing betting to a person in New Zealand (under the statute cited above). The Department of Internal Affairs is the regulator and told unlicensed providers to withdraw with immediate effect when the rule took effect in 2025. There is no licence register for bookmakers because the law does not create one; there is one lawful operator. The Entain partnership signed in 2023 runs the TAB business under a 25-year agreement, with a 50/50 share of gross profits and at least NZ$150m a year to TAB NZ for the first five years. Offshore operators taking bets from people in New Zealand are in breach of the law; the punter’s criminal exposure is removed by section 19(4) of the Gambling Act 2003, and the Department of Internal Affairs’s stated warning is the consumer-safeguard gap.

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

Three things, in order of how much they bite. The first is the safeguard package: deposit limits, time-outs and self-exclusion attached to a TAB NZ account do not transfer to an offshore account, the New Zealand Gambling Helpline (0800 654 655, text 8006) is not the operator’s complaints process, and the Problem Gambling Levy does not fund the operator’s customer service. The second is the dispute path: a TAB NZ complaint runs through the operator and the Department of Internal Affairs; an offshore complaint runs through the operator and the regulator of whatever jurisdiction the operator is licensed in, which is not New Zealand and will not hear a New Zealand complaint. The third is the regulator’s named risks: minimal consumer safeguards, possible refusal to return unspent credits, possible refusal to pay out large wins. None of these is a criminal penalty for the player — section 19(4) of the Gambling Act 2003 keeps the individual punter outside the criminal frame — and “no penalty” is not the same as “no cost”. The page describes the cost so a punter can read it before the deposit, not after the dispute.

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