Centrepay is a voluntary bill-paying service that can help people on income support manage their regular ongoing expenses, like accommodation and utilities.
It was introduced in 1998 and these days over 600,000 customers and 10,000 businesses use it. However, our customers and their communities told us it wasn’t working as intended anymore.
To find out what our customers needed us to improve, we wanted to hear from those who use Centrepay to identify how to make it the best possible service for them.
We worked alongside customers, advocates, advisory groups and businesses, and across government. We engaged through face-to-face community events, interviews, market research and public consultation discussion papers.
We established a Centrepay Reform Peak Advisory Reference Group, meeting regularly with advocacy groups who shared critical insights about customer experiences using Centrepay. These included organisations such as Anglicare, Mob Strong Debt Help, Financial Rights Legal Centre, the Australian Council of Social Services, Money Mob Talkabout, Welfare Rights & Advocacy Service WA and Economic Justice Australia among others.
These partnerships are crucial and the contributions we received were invaluable.
We used the feedback to draft reforms to the service. To make sure we got it right, we did a second round of consultation to test the proposed changes.
We received 374 submissions to consider and used these, along with the broader consultation feedback, to decide on our priority reform areas. To make Centrepay a better, safer and more helpful service, we’ll:
- add conditions to registered businesses to improve customer protection
- reduce the number of service reasons
- improve the complaints and feedback process
- strengthen our compliance processes
- update the business application and onboarding process
- update and improve the Centrepay policy and contracts.
We’re rolling out these changes from November 2025. We’ve been talking to customers and businesses in the lead up and there’ll be a 12-month transition period so they have time to prepare and adjust to the changes.
The consultation process is testament to what genuine consultation looks like and what we can achieve when we work together.
Find out more about our priority reform areas to learn about what the changes are and how they’ll benefit customers.