Poli has been around for a few years now and has proven itself to be a secure way of paying your online payments without using a credit or debit card. So it must be safe; thousands of customers use it to pay their online bills and I understand there has never been any issues (well that is what the service provider says). I used it to pay a bill but I won’t be using it again. You have to hand over your internet banking username/password and then they login to your internet banking, get your balances if you have more than one account so you can chose which account to pay the bill from, then create a payment to the entity. Well due to my “programming” at my place of work, this is a no no. Don’t even give your banking login details to your boss, if he asks for it. The issue is that by handing over your online banking username/password you are breaching the terms of conditions of using your banks website. The moment you hand it over you lose control of your login credentials. Then the only thing to do is change your password.
If it works for you that’s fine. But I refuse to hand over my internet banking login details. I prefer to login to internet banking and if necessary create a new payee and create a payment. Whats hard about that. And if anything goes wrong, you have used your banks website to create the payment. If you do use Poli, you should be aware that Poli have a disclaimer should anything goes wrong. So you are on your own.
I note that POLi in Australia has been shutdown due to advancements in the Australia banking system.
Note this article by Consumer New Zealand on Poli