Reissue a payment at a customer's request 103-04040010

This procedure is currently under review.

This document outlines the process for when a customer contacts to advise that a payment has not been received or the payment was made to the wrong account, branch or financial institution, and the customer does not have legal access to the account. Services Australia has a responsibility to make sure that the customer's payment is reissued (if eligible) as soon as possible.

Note: this procedure covers direct credit, New Payments Platform (NPP) or Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) payments. For Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) cards, see Replacing an Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) card at a customer’s request.

Student Assistance Act

The Student Assistance Act 1973 now gives the agency the power to request the recovery from financial institutions of incorrect ABSTUDY and Assistance for Isolated Children (AIC) Scheme payments and those for deceased customers.

Returned payment

If the customer advises payment has not been received, and the system advises that the financial institution has returned the payment, follow the process in Reissue a payment returned from a financial institution.

Note: payments do not appear on the Payment Summary (PS) screen for the following customers:

Child Care Subsidy (CCS)
Farm Household Allowance (FHA)
Status Resolution Support Services (SRSS)

See Customer First SAP native processes for more details.

Payments made to nominee or third party

For customers who have payments made either via a nominee or a third party, the payment reissue is made to the nominee or third party, unless the nominee or a third party agree for the payment to be made to the customer.

Unauthorised changes to a customer's payment destination

When dealing with customers who are the victims of unauthorised access to online accounts, and their payment destinations have been altered without their consent or knowledge, the:

suspected fraud must be reported via the 'Report a Suspected Fraud' tool
customer's online account must be suspended pending investigation of the security breach

For more details, see Centrelink self service - access status, locking and unlocking.

Aspects of the record should also be checked to make sure that the record has not been intertwined with another customer record. If it is determined that intertwining has occurred an Intertwined Referral Form must be completed.

Income Management customers

For customers whose payments are income managed, payments not yet returned from a financial institution can only be issued where the customer is in financial hardship and subject to approval by the Income Management policy helpdesk.

Checks before reissuing

Before reissuing the payment to the customer, the Service Officer must:

check if a delay in processing and crediting the customer's account has occurred at the Financial Institution for all payment methods except payments delivered via the New Payments Platform (NPP)
check the customer has legal access to bank account (is the account in the customer’s name?)
update the customer's payment destination details, and
check that the customer is entitled to the payment

Operational Information