Sports betting with Trustly in New Zealand: who can take your bet, who can move your money
Available in USThe quickest way to misunderstand “sports betting with Trustly in New Zealand” is to read it as a payments question. It is not. Since 28 June 2025, a single statutory line — section 74AAA of the Racing Industry Act 2020 — has decided who may lawfully take a racing or sports bet from a person in New Zealand, and that decision sits ahead of every choice about how the money moves. The only lawful operator is TAB NZ, which runs two online brands: TAB and Betcha. Entain operates the business for TAB NZ under a 25-year partnership signed in 2023. Any other bookmaker accepting a New Zealand punter’s stake is breaking New Zealand law on the operator side. That fact rearranges the rest of the page. The payment rail — whether a bettor uses Trustly, a card, a bank transfer or a wallet — sits inside a question the law has already answered, and the answer leaves a New Zealand punter a single lawful counterparty, not a marketplace.
Snapshot: checked against TAB NZ’s own terms and the Racing Industry Act 2020 as published by the New Zealand Government, current as of 31 October 2026.
What the Statute Says and What It Cuts Off
The Racing Industry Amendment Act 2025 inserted section 74AAA into the Racing Industry Act 2020, and the section came into force on 28 June 2025. The wording is unusually broad for a gambling statute: 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, which monitors compliance with the betting prohibition under section 92A of the same Act, told unlicensed providers serving New Zealand to withdraw with immediate effect. There is no licensing route for another bookmaker and no licence register for betting, because there is only one lawful provider. The Online Casino Gambling Act 2026, sometimes mistaken for an opening of the market, licenses online casino gambling only; TAB NZ holds the right to apply for a casino licence, but that licence does not extend the betting monopoly to anything beyond casino products.
Three consequences follow. First, the law does not geo-block offshore websites, so a New Zealand punter can still load a foreign bookmaker in a browser; the statute puts liability on the offshore operator, not on the player. Second, the change is recent enough that some directories still list “licensed New Zealand bookmakers” as if more than one existed — there is not. Third, the prohibition covers events held inside and outside New Zealand: a bet on the All Blacks in Tokyo or on the Melbourne Cup at Flemington is the same kind of bet under the Act as a bet on a Super Rugby Pacific match in Dunedin, and only TAB NZ may take either of them.
Greyhound racing is closing in stages from 1 August 2026, and from that date offshore operators may not take bets on greyhound races either. Anyone holding a position on the greyhounds must treat the end of August as the practical last racing date under that code, and assume that after it no lawful New Zealand bookmaker will be quoting the runners.
Where Trustly Sits Inside That Frame
Trustly is a Swedish open-banking payment institution, founded in 2008 in Stockholm under its original name Glue Finance by Carl Wilson, Joel Jakobsson and Lukas Gratte. The company launched Pay N Play, its gambling-industry product, in 2016. Trustly is supervised by the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority for the EU/EEA and by the UK Financial Conduct Authority; in February 2022 the Swedish authority issued Trustly a formal warning and a SEK 130 million fine over anti-money-laundering deficiencies. The company reports connections to about 12,000 banks and 650 million consumers globally, with over 9,000 companies using its rails. Those figures describe a serious payment rail used across Europe, not a New Zealand betting product.
Trustly matters to this page for two reasons. First, the search terms behind this article treat it as a payment method a bettor chooses, the way they might choose Visa or POLi; the law does not see it that way. Second, New Zealand has no statutory payment rule for betting accounts, so a bookmaker can technically list any rail — Trustly included — without breaking a payments law, while still breaking the betting law by taking the wager at all. A payment method can be lawful in itself and still route money to an unlawful bet. The distinction is the one a New Zealand punter needs to keep in mind.
Harm-Minimisation Tools, the Helpline, and the Player Side of the Law
The law is written against the operator, not the punter. Section 19(4) of the Gambling Act 2003, inserted in 2025, says an individual may not be convicted for placing a bet with an offshore betting operator in breach of section 74AAA; no source states a player-side penalty. That is the legal position. The honest framing on top of it is the one the Department of Internal Affairs itself uses: an overseas operator may be in a jurisdiction with minimal consumer safeguards, may not return unspent credits, and may not pay out large wins. Offshore also means no New Zealand complaints route if the operator stops answering emails. None of that is a prosecution risk; all of it is a settlement risk.
TAB NZ is the only operator that has to put the harm-minimisation machinery on the page in the first place, and it does. The TAB NZ apps carry deposit limits, time-outs and self-exclusion tools, and an exclusion applies across both TAB and Betcha because they share one account system. The free Gambling Helpline (0800 654 655, text 8006) and Safer Gambling Aotearoa sit alongside those tools; the betting age is 18 under section 89 of the Racing Industry Act 2020, and TAB NZ account opening needs a verified New Zealand address and ID. TAB NZ pays a Problem Gambling Levy of 0.74%, in force from 1 July 2025 to 30 June 2028, which funds the treatment and public-health side of the system.
A national online-betting exclusion register does not exist. The register the Online Casino Gambling Act 2026 will set up is for online casinos only, so a self-excluded punter at TAB NZ cannot be barred at an offshore bookmaker through any New Zealand mechanism — they have to use the offshore bookmaker’s own tool, which is also outside New Zealand law.
Cashier Realities: What TAB NZ Accepts and How It Compares to a Trustly World
No statutory rule names what a New Zealand betting account must accept. TAB NZ’s deposit methods and limits live in its own terms and inside the app, and the punter checks them there at the cashier rather than against a regulator’s list. Outside New Zealand, Trustly’s selling point is precisely the one the search terms behind this page turn on: open-banking rails move money directly from the customer’s bank account to the bookmaker, in real time, with no card and no wallet. The deposit is instant; the withdrawal is, in the best cases, measured in minutes. New Zealand punters cannot use that flow at a lawful bookmaker because there is only one lawful bookmaker, and its cashier is its own.
For an offshore bookmaker, the same open-banking rail still works in countries where the bank has a Trustly integration. New Zealand bank coverage on Trustly is not established in the public material; most New Zealand-facing offshore sites push punters to Visa, Mastercard, POLi, bank transfer or cryptocurrency instead. The punt to make here is simple: the speed Trustly offers abroad is real, but the speed a New Zealand punter can actually use is the speed TAB NZ offers inside its app, and that speed is the answer to “what does the cashier look like for me” rather than the answer Trustly gives in Sweden or Germany.
The Two Lawful Brands, Side by Side
TAB and Betcha are not rivals. They are the two online skins of one operator group, both run by TAB New Zealand and operated by Entain under the 25-year partnership signed in 2023, with Entain taking a 50/50 share of gross profits and at least $150m a year flowing to TAB NZ for the first five years, alongside a one-off $100m payment from Entain to the racing sector. Splitting them as competitors misreads the statute; ranking them against each other on bonuses or odds misreads the partnership.
| Brand | New Zealand status | What the operator’s own terms state on payments |
|---|---|---|
| TAB | TAB NZ brand; lawful online bookmaker under section 74AAA | In-app wallet for deposits and withdrawals; methods and minimums set in the TAB NZ terms and inside the app cashier |
| Betcha | TAB NZ brand; lawful online bookmaker under section 74AAA | Shares TAB NZ’s account and cashier system with TAB; deposits and withdrawals flow through the same wallet |
The two brands differ on product surface — TAB carries the heavier racing and Trackside live-streaming product, including racing form, Blackbook and Jockey Challenge tools, while Betcha is positioned as a simplified sportsbook — but they sit on one wallet, one harm-minimisation system and one self-exclusion record. A punter excluded at TAB is excluded at Betcha; a deposit limit set on one account applies on the other.
TAB
TAB is the older of the two brands and the heavier of the two products. The TAB NZ app carries Trackside live race streaming with in-app betting, full racing form, Blackbook and Jockey Challenge tools, plus a simplified wallet for deposits and withdrawals. The published betting rules cover fixed-odds and tote bets, with the standard racing bet types — Win, Place, Each Way, Quinella, Exacta, Trifecta, First Four, Double, Treble, Daily Double, Running Double, Quaddie, Big6 — and Multis and Same Game Multis on the sports side. Live betting is listed in the apps, though any statutory restriction on in-play markets is not established in the public material.
The TAB brand is the one to use when the racing product matters — the quinella on the Melbourne Cup, the trifecta on a New Zealand meeting, the quaddie across a card. For a punter whose week is built around the racing calendar, TAB is the only lawful New Zealand counterparty that offers the full book. The verdict here is that TAB is the right choice for racing-led punters; the racing-led punter does not have a choice at all, and TAB is the one that meets that brief.
Betcha
Betcha is the second TAB NZ brand and the one positioned for the sports-only punter. It runs on the same TAB NZ wallet, the same harm-minimisation tools and the same self-exclusion framework. The product surface is the simplified sportsbook, and the value over TAB for a punter who never bets on racing is a less crowded interface with the multi and same-game multi markets closer to the front of the slip. Where TAB earns its keep is in the racing product and the Trackside feed; Betcha earns its keep is in keeping racing out of the way of the punter who never wanted it there.
For a punter who only bets on the All Blacks, the Warriors or the Black Caps and never opens a racing market, Betcha is the cleaner of the two lawful options. The verdict is the obvious one: Betcha suits the sports-only punter; the racing punter stays at TAB; both sit inside the same statutory frame and the same wallet, and a punter who wants both must keep both brands open rather than treating them as rivals.
What an Offshore Bookmaker Looks Like Next to TAB NZ
The reader who searched for Trustly betting sites has almost certainly been on a list of European-licensed bookmakers, and most of those bookmakers will, in principle, accept a New Zealand punter if the punter can clear the registration. The list of brands in the international directory includes names like Betninja, Boomerang Bet, Golden Panda, Megapari, Rabona, Roobet, Rooster.bet, Spinbara, Thunderpick, Winz.io and BillyBets. None of them is licensed in New Zealand. Each of them is rated here against the same criteria, and each is marked “not licensed in New Zealand” because the law makes that the only honest label to attach.
The point of running them beside TAB and Betcha is not to turn the page into a comparison that flatters the offshore side. The point is to show what a New Zealand punter is being asked to trade when they take an offshore brand: the New Zealand harm-minimisation tools, the New Zealand regulator, the New Zealand complaints route, the New Zealand operator’s own betting rules and the chance that an unspent credit gets paid out at all. The Department of Internal Affairs has put those risks in writing. The page repeats them in the same plain wording because the choice is being made on the punter’s side, not on anyone else’s.
Betninja
Betninja advertises a casino welcome of EUR 1,000 bonus and 100 free spins, alongside a sports offer of a 100% match up to EUR 100 on the first deposit. The product is a casino and sportsbook on one wallet. Status: Not licensed in New Zealand. The terms on payments and identity checks are read in the account area. The outcome for a punter is a platform without a New Zealand regulator.
Boomerang Bet
Boomerang Bet runs a casino, live casino and sportsbook on one account, and its English site advertises a first deposit bonus of 100% up to EUR 100 plus a welcome bonus of 100% up to EUR 500 with 200 free spins on the casino side. The product is the standard Soft2Bet-group sportsbook template; Status: Not licensed in New Zealand. Payment terms are read in the cashier. We note the package is wide on paper, though the punter trades that breadth for the absence of a New Zealand regulator.
Golden Panda
Golden Panda offers a Sports section with a sportsbook, esports and virtual sports, alongside casino, live casino, crash games, rewards, cashback, a VIP Club, Golden Goals and Prediction Markets. The product is one of the broader ones in the offshore directory. Status: Not licensed in New Zealand. The breadth of market is genuine, though it offers no guarantee that a large win will clear.
Megapari
Megapari’s bonus page lists a free bet of 15% of the first deposit, a Free Bet Hour with 50% cashback on football losses returned as a free bet, and sports cashback. The amounts on the Singapore version of the site are shown in SGD; no New Zealand version of these terms was seen. This remains an offshore service; the punter is reading the standard international version of the terms.
Rabona
Rabona launched on 23 December 2019 as the sixth online sportsbook of the Soft2Bet group. It uses the standard group template, with the usual welcome package and multi-maker features. The operating history is long, yet it remains outside the reach of the New Zealand regulator.
Roobet
Roobet is a brand name of Raw Entertainment B.V., registered in Curaçao under company number 157205, and licensed under Curaçao licence OGL/2024/687/0427. The site is a crypto casino and sportsbook; the regulatory framework is based entirely in Curaçao. This means the supervisor is overseas, and the player faces limited recourse if a dispute were to arise.
Rooster.bet
Rooster.bet takes card deposits by Visa and Mastercard with a 20 €/$ minimum, instant processing and no fees, and card withdrawals take 1-3 banking days. The card rail is the slowest of the modern options but the most familiar; the deposit minimum and the 1-3 day withdrawal window are typical for the offshore market. The verdict is that the cashier is plain and the punter must assume a New Zealand bank will see the transaction.
Spinbara
Spinbara advertises a first deposit bonus of 100% up to EUR 100, a sport crypto welcome bonus of 100% up to 200 USDT, and a casino welcome bonus of 100% up to EUR 500 plus 200 free spins. The product covers both fiat and crypto rails. Status: Not licensed in New Zealand. We note the choice of rails is wide, but the punter has no local avenue for complaints.
Thunderpick
Thunderpick advertises a 100% deposit bonus up to EUR 600. The terms set a minimum withdrawal of EUR 10, and a closing fee of EUR 20 applies if the account balance falls below that amount upon closure. These small-print fees can be costly for casual players. Status: Not licensed in New Zealand. The platform’s speed claims do not alter the fact that the operator is unregulated in this country.
Winz.io
Winz.io accepts BTC, ETH, LTC, BCH, DOGE, USDT, BNB, ADA, TRX, XRP and SOL, deposits are made by connecting a crypto wallet, and the site advertises no deposit limits and instant withdrawals. The product is built around the crypto rail from the cashier up. Status: Not licensed in New Zealand. The speed is real on the crypto side, but the absence of a deposit limit does not change who regulates the account.
BillyBets
BillyBets includes cashback and reload bonuses, plus a coin shop where players exchange rewards for free bets and spins; the VIP programme has five levels. The loyalty mechanic is a core design choice here. Status: Not licensed in New Zealand. Ultimately, players depend on the operator to honour these rewards, as no New Zealand regulator can intervene if they fail to do so.
Millioner
Millioner states that e-wallet deposits and payouts are fast, while credit card transactions may take longer due to bank processing. The framing is consistent with offshore operators. Status: Not licensed in New Zealand. The rail speed is similar to Trustly’s European performance, but crucially, it does not involve any New Zealand-licensed institution.
How the Payments Decision Lands in New Zealand
The search terms behind this page treat the payment method as the variable. In New Zealand, the lawful operator is fixed and the payment method is whatever TAB NZ’s cashier offers. A punter who wants a Trustly-style open-banking flow is asking for a rail that does not run through TAB NZ’s app on the published evidence, and that does not make the rail bad; it makes the rail outside the one counterparty the statute allows. The choice a New Zealand punter actually has is not between rails; it is between TAB NZ on TAB NZ’s rails and an offshore bookmaker on whatever rail that bookmaker accepts. The honest summary of the offshore side is that the rail works as advertised for deposits and most withdrawals, the operator may not return unspent credits and may not pay out large wins, and there is no New Zealand complaints route.
A bank-blocking order was not found in the public material. Nothing in the law stops a New Zealand bank from processing a card transaction to an offshore bookmaker, though a bank may decline on its own fraud rules, and a New Zealand punter who funds a betting account offshore must assume the transaction is visible on the statement. The same applies to crypto, with the difference that the visibility sits on the chain rather than on the statement.
Tax, Bonuses and the Side Conditions of a TAB NZ Account
For the punter, Inland Revenue’s general guidance is that recreational gambling winnings are not taxable, and prize money from TAB horse, dog and trotting races is not taxable. A person who bets as a business is a different case and must consult Inland Revenue or an accountant. None of that changes for a punt placed via Trustly rather than via the TAB NZ wallet; the rail does not decide the tax treatment.
TAB NZ runs “bonus bets” promotions, and the terms on size, wagering and expiry are TAB NZ’s own, because no New Zealand rule on bet-bonus size or wagering terms was found in the public material. An offshore bookmaker’s bonus headline is read in its own terms; the wagering factor, the minimum odds and the expiry sit beside the headline. The audit of those terms is the punter’s job, because the regulator who normally polices the headline is not a New Zealand regulator for the offshore brand.
Operator side, TAB NZ pays the Problem Gambling Levy at 0.74%. An offshore operator supplying New Zealand residents pays online gambling duty at 12% of profits since 1 July 2024, rising to 16% from 1 January 2027. The duty being payable does not make the offer lawful; a tax bill is a tax bill, not a New Zealand betting licence.
The Closing Picture: One Counterparty, One Cashier, One Set of Tools
The structure of the New Zealand sports-betting market in 2026 is the structure of a regulated monopoly: one operator, two brands, one wallet, one self-exclusion record, one harm-minimisation system and one regulator watching it. The Trustly question behind the search terms sits inside that frame. Where a punter sees a payment rail, the statute sees a counterparty choice, and the counterparty choice is already made. The honest summary is that Trustly is a real payment rail used by millions of customers and thousands of businesses across Europe, that New Zealand bank coverage on Trustly is not established in the public material, and that even if it were, the only lawful New Zealand counterparty for a racing or sports bet is TAB NZ on TAB and Betcha. The punter who wants Trustly’s open-banking speed is asking for a feature the lawful New Zealand market does not yet offer, and the punter who wants a different bookmaker is asking for a counterparty the law does not allow.
The Department of Internal Affairs states that overseas operators may withhold credits or fail to pay out large wins. These are the risks the regulator highlights for any New Zealander using an offshore service. The line is not a sales pitch; it is the regulator’s own framing of what the offshore side costs the punter who tries it.
Frequently Asked Questions About Trustly and Sports Betting in New Zealand
Can I use Trustly on New Zealand betting sites?
Trustly is a Swedish open-banking payment institution used by thousands of European businesses, including many licensed European bookmakers. New Zealand bank coverage on Trustly is not established in the public material, and the only lawful online bookmaker in New Zealand since 28 June 2025 is TAB NZ, running the TAB and Betcha brands. The cashier you actually see at the lawful New Zealand counterparty is TAB NZ’s own, set out in the app and in the operator’s terms, and it is the one to check before depositing.
Do any sports betting sites accept Trustly?
Many licensed European bookmakers list Trustly at the cashier, and Pay N Play, Trustly’s 2016 gambling-industry product, was built for exactly that flow. In New Zealand, no licensed bookmaker other than TAB NZ may take a racing or sports bet from a person in New Zealand under section 74AAA of the Racing Industry Act 2020, regardless of where the operator is resident or incorporated. A bookmaker accepting Trustly abroad is not, on that fact alone, lawful in New Zealand.
What betting apps use Trustly?
In Europe, Trustly works through apps at licensed operators that have integrated the open-banking rail. New Zealand does not block overseas apps, and a New Zealand punter can technically install a Trustly-integrated European bookmaker; the same punter depends on an offshore operator that is not licensed in New Zealand. TAB NZ’s own app is the lawful New Zealand option and accepts the deposit methods set out in its terms.
Which bookmaker may lawfully take sports and racing bets in New Zealand?
TAB NZ is the only provider lawfully offering racing and sports betting to people in New Zealand, and the operator runs two online brands, TAB and Betcha, both delivered under a 25-year partnership with Entain signed in 2023. The Racing Industry Amendment Act 2025 inserted section 74AAA, in force from 28 June 2025, and the Department of Internal Affairs told unlicensed providers serving New Zealand to withdraw with immediate effect.
What does a player lose by betting with a bookmaker that has no New Zealand licence?
The Department of Internal Affairs warns that overseas operators may be in jurisdictions with minimal consumer safeguards, may not return unspent credits and may not pay out large wins. There is no New Zealand complaints route for a New Zealand punter dealing with an offshore bookmaker, and the harm-minimisation tools that TAB NZ must provide — deposit limits, time-outs and self-exclusion across TAB and Betcha — are not in place at an offshore brand. Section 19(4) of the Gambling Act 2003, inserted in 2025, says an individual may not be convicted for placing a bet with an offshore operator in breach of section 74AAA, so the legal risk sits on the operator side, not the player’s; the practical risk sits on the punter’s side.
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