Skrill and sports betting in New Zealand

Updated October 2026

Licensed

Available in US

Fast payouts

18+ Only

*Current as of 31 October 2026 — cross-referenced against TAB NZ’s published terms and the Department of Internal Affairs statement on the Racing Industry Act 2020.*

Skrill turned twenty-five last year. It still moves money for online sportsbooks the way it did in 2001 — a digital wallet that holds balances in dozens of currencies, sends them to a merchant, and lets a bettor move winnings back out without retyping a card number. In New Zealand that usefulness runs straight into a hard legal fact: since 28 June 2025, only the TAB NZ group — TAB and Betcha — may take a racing or sports bet from a person in New Zealand, under section 74AAA of the Racing Industry Act 2020. Anyone betting on an offshore bookmaker from a New Zealand address is using an operator the Department of Internal Affairs has told to withdraw.

That tension is the page. Skrill works as a wallet. Skrill rarely works as a payment method on the only sites a Kiwi punter is legally allowed to use, because TAB NZ runs its own cashier rather than third-party e-wallets. The substance is what a bettor who already has a Skrill balance might do with it, and what an offshore bookmaker that lists Skrill offers someone sitting in Auckland or Wellington.

Skrill in one sitting: what the wallet is and isn’t

Skrill began life on 27 July 2001 as Moneybookers, a London e-money account for online merchants. The Moneybookers name ran for a decade before the September 2011 rebrand, completed by 2013. Private equity came next: Investcorp in 2007, CVC Capital Partners for €600 million in 2013, then Paysafe’s predecessor Optimal Payments buying it for €1.1 billion in 2015. Skrill is now a subsidiary of Paysafe Limited.

Two product moves added depth. From February 2018 Skrill started sending money abroad as a remittance business; from July 2018 it added crypto trading inside the wallet. So the same account that pays a bookmaker in EUR can hold BTC, USDT or XRP and convert at the wallet’s quoted rate. Today’s Skrill is a multi-currency wallet plus an FX shop, with merchant payments, payouts to bank, and crypto on top.

The caveats that matter for a bettor are older than the crypto products. A breach exposing roughly 4.5 million Skrill records from 2009 surfaced in October 2015 — old data, long since remedied, but it is the reason Skrill does frequent identity re-checks on dormant accounts. KYC friction is normal on Skrill itself: every payout over a small threshold triggers a documentary check. Some readers will recognise the experience of having a winning withdrawal “pending verification” for two working days before the funds land. That is the wallet’s own compliance posture, not the bookmaker’s.

A Skrill-to-Skrill transfer is typically free. Funding the wallet costs what the funding method costs — a bank deposit is cheap, a card deposit roughly 1.9%, a crypto deposit is whatever the chain fee is. Payouts from a bookmaker back to Skrill are usually free on the Skrill side; the bookmaker may charge a percentage on its end.

Skrill at New Zealand bookmakers: who takes it and who can legally bet with it

This is the split the rest of the page turns on. Some sites list Skrill as a deposit method. Almost none of them have a New Zealand betting licence, because there is no such licence to have. Section 74AAA of the Racing Industry Act 2020 names TAB NZ as the sole lawful provider of racing and sports betting to people in New Zealand; the Department of Internal Affairs told offshore providers serving New Zealand to withdraw with immediate effect on 28 June 2025. TAB NZ’s own cashier — built into the TAB and Betcha apps — accepts EFTPOS, bank deposit, POLi, and the credit/debit cards the operator names in its terms. Skrill does not appear in that list.

For a New Zealand resident with a Skrill balance, three things follow in sequence.

First, the wallet can still earn its keep: paying for things that are not New Zealand sports betting. Online casino, international poker, esports books licensed elsewhere, and any number of merchants accept Skrill without ever asking where the account holder lives.

Second, if the goal is to bet on a New Zealand horse race, a Super Rugby match, or a Black Caps ODI, TAB and Betcha are the lawful route. A Skrill deposit will not reach them; a bank transfer or a POLi deposit will.

Third, an offshore bookmaker that still accepts Skrill from a New Zealand account holder is being served in breach of the operator’s section 74AAA obligation — and according to DIA’s published warning, may not return unspent credits or pay out a large win. The money may move; the protection does not.

The rest of this article works through those three points: the wallet itself, the New Zealand legal shape, what TAB NZ actually offers a Skrill user who wants to bet locally, and how to weigh an offshore bookmaker that does accept Skrill knowing what DIA has warned about.

New Zealand’s betting monopoly in plain terms

The Racing Industry Act 2020 was already in place. The Racing Industry Amendment Act 2025 inserted section 74AAA, which states that 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 change took effect on 28 June 2025.

There is no second licence tier and no register to consult, because the framework only names one provider. Operators serving New Zealand before that date were told to stop. The penalty for breaching section 74AAA is not stated in the section and no prosecution of an offshore operator has been published; the Department of Internal Affairs instead issues public warnings and provides an operator-by-operator withdrawal direction.

The monopoly splits in two for the bettor. TAB NZ holds the licence and the brands. Entain runs the business under a 25-year agreement signed in 2023 — a deal that hands Entain a 50/50 share of gross profits, guarantees TAB NZ at least NZ$150 million a year for the first five years, and brought a one-off NZ$100 million payment from Entain to the racing sector. TAB and Betcha are actually the same operator group with two front doors, not two rivals. Comparing them on price or on market depth misses the point — the picking happens inside the group.

What TAB NZ may offer, and what it may not

TAB NZ takes fixed-odds and tote (pool) bets. The bet types TAB NZ publishes in its betting rules cover Win, Place, Each Way, Quinella, Exacta, Trifecta, First Four, Double, Treble, Daily Double, Running Double, Quaddie, Big6, plus multis and Same Game Multis — a multi whose legs sit inside one match. Live betting is listed in the TAB NZ apps; any statutory restriction on in-play markets in New Zealand has not been published. Spread betting and a betting exchange are outside the framework: there is no lawful New Zealand exchange, and the Racing Industry Act does not license one.

Esports is the edge case. Whether an esports bet counts as “sports betting” under section 74AAA has not been published in guidance; the page does not assume a position. Greyhound racing is closing in stages from 1 August 2026 — and from that date, no operator may offer greyhound racing bets to a person in New Zealand.

What is licensed under the wider gambling law

The Online Casino Gambling Act 2026 creates a separate licence for online casino gambling — for slots, table games, live dealer, and (in the same law) virtual sports treated as casino products. TAB NZ may apply for that licence because it is licensed; offshore casinos that wish to take New Zealand casino play may apply when the licensing window opens. The casino licence is not a sports-betting licence, and the casino harm-minimisation register does not cover betting accounts. The two products live under two separate regimes.

What the rules cost a player

For a TAB NZ bettor, the cost of the framework is small: 18+ age verification, a New Zealand address, ID documents, a verified payment method. Sports betting in New Zealand sits on age 18; land-based casino gambling sits on 20 — those are not the same floor and the page does not flatten them.

The bettor pays the Problem Gambling Levy indirectly. TAB NZ remits 0.74% to harm-minimisation funding under a levy in force from 1 July 2025 to 30 June 2028; that is the operator-side contribution, not a punters’ charge on the bet slip.

On tax: Inland Revenue’s published guidance is that recreational gambling winnings are generally not taxable, and prize money from TAB horse, dog and trotting races is not taxable. A bettor who runs betting as a business is a different case. The position is general information, not tax advice, and the right call for an individual is to consult Inland Revenue or an accountant.

Safer gambling in a single-operator market

A monopoly changes the shape of player protection. There is one safer-gambling programme that reaches New Zealand sports-betting customers directly: TAB NZ’s own.

Inside the TAB and Betcha apps the tools available are deposit limits, time-outs and self-exclusion. Self-exclusion applies across both brands — TAB and Betcha share a single account holder record, so a ban on one is a ban on the other. There is no separate national online sports-betting exclusion register; the register that the Online Casino Gambling Act 2026 will eventually require covers online casino play, not betting.

The free Gambling Helpline — 0800 654 655, or text 8006 — is the public front door for problem gambling support. Safer Gambling Aotearoa is the umbrella programme. Both are independent of TAB NZ; both can be reached whether a punter bets with TAB NZ or somewhere else. Anyone using an offshore bookmaker can still call the helpline; the offshore operator does not provide the same exclusion infrastructure.

The Department of Internal Affairs publishes the framework and the warning statements but does not host a betting-exclusion register of its own. So when an offshore operator markets “self-exclusion” from its site, that exclusion binds the offshore operator — it does not stop the punter opening a TAB NZ account and betting again.

Payments and payout speed at TAB NZ: what a Skrill user actually faces

TAB NZ runs its own cashier. The deposit methods that TAB NZ publishes in its terms are EFTPOS at retail outlets, bank deposit, POLi (the New Zealand instant bank-to-bank layer), and the credit/debit cards TAB NZ chooses to accept. Skrill is not on that list. Neteller — Skrill’s sister wallet inside the same Paysafe group — is not on that list either. Paysafe itself does not appear.

For a bettor whose day-to-day money lives in Skrill, that creates an extra step. The usual route is: withdraw from Skrill to a New Zealand bank account, then deposit to TAB NZ via POLi or bank deposit. The wallet is not the bottleneck — the cadence of the rail is. POLi deposits land inside minutes for most New Zealand banks. Bank deposit from a Skrill payout takes one to two working days. TAB NZ’s internal deposit minimums are set in its own terms, not the wallet’s.

On the way out, payouts from TAB NZ go back to the original payment method where possible — bank payout to a verified account, typically within one to three working days for New Zealand banks. TAB NZ does not pay out to Skrill. A bettor who funded the account with POLi and wants the winnings back in the Skrill wallet routes them: TAB NZ → New Zealand bank → Skrill. That is a normal retail-bank cycle: bank transfers typically land the same day from a major New Zealand bank to a Skrill account in the same name, sometimes with an extra one-day hold on the first transfer while Skrill reconciles the bank account holder. Skrill’s own withdrawal to a Visa card or to a bank account inside New Zealand generally goes through, with the carrying FX cost where currencies differ.

The cost of that extra rail is the FX margin Skrill charges when topping up a wallet in NZD from a foreign-currency source, plus whatever the bank charges for an incoming international transfer. That second fee tends to be modest. The FX margin is where the wallet quietly takes its cut — and the spread is usually wider than what a New Zealand bank might charge on a card transaction abroad.

Pace, then, is reasonable: TAB NZ’s payout in one to three working days, bank-to-Skrill same day or next day, Skrill-to-bank when converting back the same day to two days. That is the practical answer to the question “can I use Skrill at TAB NZ” — not at the deposit stage, but as part of the bank round-trip on either side of the bet.

Why the ranking is limited

This site ranks three operators. The rank order does not pretend to be a global league table of every sportsbook on the internet. In New Zealand, only one operator group may lawfully take online bets, and the group has two brand front doors. Any wider ranking might imply a competition that does not exist in law.

What the page can rank is the user-fit question: which legal option for what punter, and which offshore bookmaker might a Kiwi using Skrill actually be weighing — with full sight of what the law says about offshore offers and what DIA warns about them.

TAB

TAB is the legacy brand of the TAB NZ group. Its strengths are the ones the monopoly buys: every New Zealand and Australian race meeting is priced; every All Blacks test, NRL round, Super Rugby Pacific match, Black Caps ODI and Warriors match is on the programme; Trackside live race streaming is in the app; the form, Blackbook and Jockey Challenge tools sit beside the betting slip; in-app live betting on the racing and sports programme is built in.

The cashier is the New Zealand cashier — POLi, bank deposit, EFTPOS, credit and debit cards. Skrill is not accepted. Identity verification against a New Zealand address is required to open an account. Safer-gambling tools — deposit limits, time-outs and self-exclusion — are in the app and apply across TAB and Betcha.

For a New Zealand-based punter who wants a single account that covers every lawful market the country allows, TAB is the fit. The downsides are the ones the framework imposes: no exchange, no spread, and no Skrill on the deposit side. A Skrill user who wants to bet with TAB pays the small drag of bank-to-Skrill to fund the account and back again on a payout.

Betcha

Betcha is the second online brand of the TAB NZ group, run on the same rails as TAB and sharing the same TAB NZ licence. The product is a more modern cashier, with a simplified wallet for deposits and withdrawals, the same racing and sports programme, and the same safer-gambling tools. The same age, address and ID verification rules apply.

For a Skrill user specifically, Betcha is not a different answer from TAB on the payment side — same cashier family, same lack of wallet support, same round-trip through the New Zealand banking system. The choice between TAB and Betcha inside the group is a product-experience choice (Betcha is the cleaner app), not a payment-method one.

Winz

Winz is an offshore crypto casino and sportsbook. It is not licensed in New Zealand; the only operator that may take a sports bet from a person in New Zealand is the TAB NZ group. The brand names Anjouan and Tobique licences, holder Novatrix SRL — neither gives any right to take bets from a New Zealand address.

The sportsbook funds itself in crypto. The cashier accepts BTC, ETH, LTC, BCH, DOGE, USDT, BNB, ADA, TRX, XRP and SOL, and the site advertises instant withdrawals and no deposit limits. For a New Zealand resident who already holds crypto in a self-custody wallet, Winz is technically reachable: connect the wallet, deposit, bet, withdraw. The page will not recommend the route, and the legal analysis above already explains why.

For a Skrill user specifically, Winz is an awkward fit: crypto in and crypto out, with Skrill on the edges only via Skrill’s own crypto buy/sell. The crypto path is what the operator is designed for.

What an offshore bookmaker with Skrill really offers a Kiwi punter

The offshore half of the market is the practical reason for the question. Skrill is a wallet commonly listed at large offshore sportsbooks because Skrill processes deposits cheaply and shields the merchant from card chargebacks. New Zealand readers searching “sports betting with Skrill” are usually searching because a site they have seen — or seen promoted — accepts Skrill, and the site is almost always offshore.

What the offshore bookmaker offers in practice is a wide market list — European football leagues, US sports, esports, niche sports, in-play markets that TAB NZ does not publish — and a cashier that takes Skrill. What it does not offer in New Zealand is the regulatory backing of TAB NZ. The Department of Internal Affairs is explicit on the point:

• offshore operators may be in jurisdictions with minimal consumer safeguards;
• they may not return unspent credits;
• they may not pay out large wins;
• a New Zealand bettor has no New Zealand complaints route to escalate a dispute;
• the operator is in breach of section 74AAA of the Racing Industry Act 2020 for serving a New Zealand address.

For the player, the Gambling Act 2003 — amended in 2025 — provides that an individual may not be convicted for placing a bet with an offshore operator in breach of section 74AAA. There is no published penalty for the individual. The Department of Internal Affairs targets the operator, not the punter.

That shape — operator exposed, punter technically free — is what makes the offshore option persist even after the monopoly tightened. A bettor who weighs the route knowingly is making a calculation that the only thing the regulator will do is refuse to help if a complaint arises. The choice is the punter’s. The information is on the page; the judgement is the punter’s own.

Pacing, limits, and what to read in the terms

Offshore bookmakers that take Skrill usually publish a withdrawal table by tier — limits per day and per month that step up as the account is verified. Two examples pulled from published terms: Betalright runs NZD withdrawals from $1,000/day and $13,000/month at level 1 to $3,000/day and $35,000/month at level 5; FunBet runs similar tiers, capped at NZD $3,000/day and $35,000/month at the top tier. New Zealand is not in the excluded jurisdiction list of either brand at the time of the snapshot.

A New Zealand punter reading those tables must pay attention to the tier the account starts at, the KYC needed to step up, and the per-day cap on a single payout. A Skrill wallet will not increase those tiers for free; verification does.

Pace is faster than TAB NZ on the small end: Skrill payouts from a sportsbook typically land inside minutes, capped by the operator’s internal pending period of a few hours. The ceiling is what the operator decides, not what Skrill can technically do.

Bonuses and wagering on the offshore side

Most offshore Skrill-friendly sportsbooks run a deposit bonus with a turnover multiple and a minimum price rule. The structure varies brand by brand; the audit table at the bottom of the page shows what each named brand publishes in its terms. The rule for the punter stays the same: the wagering requirement is what the bonus actually costs.

A typical sportsbook welcome bonus sets a turnover multiple somewhere between 5× and 12× the bonus amount (sometimes bonus + deposit, sometimes bonus only), with a minimum price around 1.50 to 2.00 decimal on each qualifying leg, and a deadline of 7 to 30 days. A Skrill deposit often qualifies a brand for a smaller bonus than a card deposit — many operators apply a “no Skrill/Neteller” carve-out to the welcome package because e-wallet deposits are the easiest to abuse.

The page does not advertise a bonus, deposit code or promo. The audit table summarises what research showed in the public terms of each named brand, so the punter can compare the shape of an offer without the page endorsing it.

Casino-style products the offshore market blends in

A Skrill-friendly sportsbook is almost always a casino-and-sportsbook hybrid under one account. Megapari runs a free bet on first deposit, a Free Bet Hour cashback for football losses, and sports cashback in SGD on its Singapore site — none of which is offered to a New Zealand punter through a New Zealand version of the terms. Boomerang Bet runs a sportsbook, casino and live casino on one account with a 100% match on first deposit up to EUR 100 and a separate welcome bonus of 100% up to EUR 500 plus 200 free spins on the casino side. BillyBets layers cashback and reload bonuses on sports, plus a coin shop where coins earned by depositing and betting convert into free bets and free spins.

That is the operational shape of the offshore market — one account, several verticals, a wallet at the centre that moves money between sportsbook, casino and live casino. A Skrill user finds that pattern familiar because Skrill is built for it. The legal analysis above still applies: in New Zealand the casino vertical is regulated separately under the Online Casino Gambling Act 2026, and only operators with the eventual New Zealand casino licence may take casino play from a New Zealand address. A sportsbook licence does not give that right.

How to compare the three ranked operators

The three operators above are not on the same footing, because one group has a New Zealand betting monopoly and the other does not. The comparison below ranks them inside one column by what they offer a New Zealand bettor who already holds a Skrill balance; the legal column makes the framework explicit.

The table does three jobs at once. It places the two lawful brands together — TAB and Betcha — and notes that Winz is the only operator in the ranking that is not part of the legal monopoly. It surfaces the payment-method gap that drives the practical question: none of the three accepts Skrill at the cashier for a New Zealand bettor. And it shows the only deposit rails that do work for each brand: New Zealand banking rails for TAB and Betcha, crypto for Winz.io.

A Skrill user in New Zealand with a balance and a desire to bet has to convert somewhere. The two cleanest routes are the bank round-trip into TAB and Betcha, and a Skrill-fiat-to-crypto swap on the way into Winz.io. The first route is lawful and regulated; the second is offshore and unregulated in New Zealand even when the wallet itself works.

How to move Skrill money into TAB NZ in practice

The shortest path is well-trodden even though it does not use Skrill directly.

Step one is the Skrill withdrawal to a verified New Zealand bank account in the punter’s own name. Skrill’s bank-payout rail works for major New Zealand banks and typically takes one to two working days for the first transfer when the bank account is being verified, then same-day for subsequent transfers.

Step two is the TAB NZ or Betcha deposit via POLi from that same bank account. POLi is the New Zealand instant-payment layer; deposits land inside minutes and there is no card surcharge.

Step three is the betting. TAB NZ may require further ID verification on first withdrawal — a passport or driver’s licence, and proof of address such as a bank statement or utility bill.

On the way out, the route is the reverse: TAB NZ payout to the same New Zealand bank account, then Skrill top-up. Skrill’s FX spread on a NZD-to-NZD transfer inside the wallet is zero; the spread only bites on a NZD-to-EUR or NZD-to-USD conversion inside the wallet, which is not needed if the punter banks in NZD throughout.

The cost of this route is one to two working days each way and any currency-conversion spread Skrill charges if the funding source inside the wallet was not in NZD. For most New Zealand bettors the round trip is free; for a Skrill account topped up from a EUR card, the spread on converting EUR to NZD inside the wallet is the only meaningful charge.

What to check on an offshore bookmaker before depositing a Skrill balance

A punt-shaped list, in the order the checks pay off:

• The brand’s licence page. If it names any non-Anjouan/Tobique licence, the page may be a sign the operator is licensed for something — but licensed is not the same as licensed-to-take-bets-from-New-Zealand. Only TAB NZ currently has that.
• The terms’ section 2.3 (or equivalent “excluded jurisdictions” section). New Zealand absent from that list means the brand does not formally exclude New Zealand — it does not mean New Zealand play is licensed.
• The cashier. Skrill listed means the wallet works; Skrill absent means the page cannot help.
• Withdrawal tiers. The daily and monthly cap the account opens at, the KYC required to step up, and the time it takes to clear KYC. Skrill is fast on the rail; KYC is the friction.
• The bonus terms. Wagering multiple, minimum price, expiry, and whether Skrill deposits qualify. The page reads the wagering terms the way a bookkeeper does.

Closing thoughts on the New Zealand shape

The Skrill question in New Zealand becomes much smaller once section 74AAA is taken seriously. Skrill is a wallet; in 2026 it is not a deposit method at the only lawful sportsbook. New Zealand sports betting is a TAB-and-Betcha market, not a Skrill-friendly multi-brand market. The page recommends the lawful route for any punter who wants the protections of the New Zealand framework and the cost of the bank round-trip into and out of Skrill. The page refuses to recommend, advertise or invite sign-up with an offshore brand; the framework and the regulator’s warnings have settled the legal analysis.

For a Kiwi punter with a working Skrill balance, the cleanest path is what the cleaner-money path usually is: bank withdrawal, POLi deposit, bet, POLi/bank payout, Skrill top-up. The wallet is the round-trip envelope for the money; the bank is the rails; TAB NZ is the bet.

A punt is a bet. A multi is an accumulator. A Same Game Multi is the same on this side of the Tasman as the other. The dollar signs and the time zones match. What does not match is the licence regime, and that is what this page is built around.

Frequently asked questions about sports betting with Skrill in New Zealand

Can Skrill be used on betting sites?

It can, on most offshore sportsbooks and on international casino sites — but not at TAB NZ or Betcha, the only operators that may lawfully take sports bets from people in New Zealand under section 74AAA of the Racing Industry Act 2020.

Do any sports betting sites accept Skrill?

Yes, many offshore sportsbooks in the global market accept Skrill at the cashier. The wallet is widely accepted because Skrill processes deposits cheaply for the merchant and shields it from card chargebacks. New Zealand-based punters using those sites do so without a New Zealand betting licence covering them.

Which betting apps accept Skrill?

Most offshore sportsbook apps list Skrill at their cashier. The TAB NZ app does not — its cashier accepts POLi, bank deposit, EFTPOS, and named credit and debit cards. Betcha’s app runs the same cashier family and does not accept Skrill either.

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

TAB NZ’s own terms page lists the deposit methods the operator currently supports — POLi, bank deposit, EFTPOS at retail outlets, and credit/debit cards. Skrill is not in that list. The cashier is in the TAB and Betcha apps, and the terms are the definitive source for any change to that list.

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

Only the TAB NZ group — TAB and Betcha — since the Racing Industry Amendment Act 2025 inserted section 74AAA into the Racing Industry Act 2020, in force from 28 June 2025. No other provider has a New Zealand betting licence; none exists, because the law establishes one lawful provider only.

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