DEFT is Stopping Card Payments: Here’s How to Keep Earning Points

What’s Changing

DEFT has confirmed a change to how it accepts payments. From Thursday 1 October 2026, you’ll no longer be able to pay a DEFT notice directly on deft.com.au using a credit or debit card. Any card payments you’ve already scheduled for 1 October 2026 or later will be cancelled on that date.

DEFT is used to collect payments for a wide range of billers – body corporates, strata managers, insurers, schools, and utilities among them – so this change touches a lot of businesses that have quietly been paying these bills by card for years, often without a second thought about how.

For the full detail, see DEFT’s own change notice.

What This Actually Means for Your Payments

If you log into deft.com.au yourself and pay with a card, that option is closing. Any scheduled card payment gets cancelled on 1 October, and from that date you’re limited to whatever non-card methods DEFT still supports. That means giving up your card’s points, giving up the interest-free window between paying and the money leaving your account, and adding a manual step to replace whatever you had automated.

If you’re already paying that same DEFT notice through pay.com.au, this change doesn’t touch you at all. You were never making a direct card payment on deft.com.au in the first place – pay.com.au sits between you and the biller, taking your card payment and settling with DEFT via BPAY using the Biller Code and Customer Reference Number (CRN) on your notice. What DEFT is switching off is direct card acceptance on their own site, not BPAY, and not payments routed to them through a platform like ours.

How pay.com.au Keeps Your Points Flowing

If you’re currently paying DEFT notices directly by card, the fix is to move that payment through pay.com.au before 1 October, rather than scrambling for a workaround after the fact.

1. Add DEFT as a payee
   Set up DEFT in pay.com.au using the BPAY Biller Code and CRN shown on your DEFT notice.
2. Enter the amount
   Confirm the payment amount from your notice.
3. Pay with your card
   Choose your credit card as the payment method in pay.com.au, instead of a card entry directly on deft.com.au.
4. We settle the bill
   pay.com.au processes your card payment and sends the funds to DEFT via BPAY, using the details you provided. Your biller gets paid exactly the way they expect.

Every DEFT payment will earn your card’s own points and PayRewards Points on top. That’s the double-dip pay.com.au is built around. Pay DEFT directly once card acceptance ends, and both of those disappear. Route it through pay.com.au, and neither does.

What You Should Do Now

Check how you currently pay DEFT. If you log into deft.com.au and pay by card, that option ends 1 October 2026.

Check for scheduled card payments. Anything scheduled for 1 October 2026 or later will be cancelled automatically – it won’t just carry over.

Move the payment before the deadline, not after. Add DEFT as a payee in pay.com.au using the Biller Code and CRN from your notice, and set your card as the payment method, so there’s no gap between DEFT switching off card acceptance and you finding an alternative.

Check your other BPAY billers while you’re at it. If DEFT is changing, other billers may follow. Anything you pay via BPAY can be added to pay.com.au the same way.

The information in this article is general in nature and does not take your objectives, financial situation or needs into account. For pay.com.au issued products, conditions, fees and charges apply.

Written by Christina McDonald

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About the author

Christina is a Marketing Specialist at pay.com.au, where she works across the Advisor Program and broader campaigns. When she's not knee-deep in briefs and copy, you'll find her travelling somewhere new or painting in her studio.