PayID vs PayTo
They sound like siblings and behave like opposites. With PayID you push money out once. With PayTo you hand someone permission to pull it, again and again, within limits you approve.
Not interchangeable, and the useful skill is telling them apart when a business asks. A PayID payment is a single push you control completely: you enter the address, you see the account name, you send. A PayTo request is an agreement that appears in your banking app for approval, and approving it grants standing authority to take money on a stated schedule up to a stated cap. Both run on the same national rails and neither charges you. Read a PayTo request as a contract, not a payment.
Side by side
Neither of these charges the customer a fee of its own, so there is no cost row to compute — what you pay is set by the card or account behind the wallet. The rows above are what actually separates them.
Which one, and when
A business asks you to approve a PayTo agreement
What appears in your app is a request for ongoing permission, not a one-off charge, and the amount and frequency shown are the limits you are agreeing to. Approve it only if you meant to set up something recurring with that business. If you were expecting to pay once, you were expecting a PayID request instead, and the mismatch is worth a phone call.
Paying someone back for dinner
A one-off push to a phone number, with their name shown before you confirm. There is nothing ongoing to set up and nothing to cancel afterwards. Using a standing authority for a single payment would be strange in the same way as giving a friend your card to keep.
You want to stop paying a business
Because a PayTo agreement lives in your banking app, you can revoke it there without the merchant's cooperation. There is no equivalent question for PayID, since nothing recurring ever existed — which is a real advantage of one-off pushes and a reason not to grant an authority you do not need.
The other side offers you a choice
Match the tool to the shape of the obligation. A single invoice is a push; a subscription is an authority. Businesses sometimes ask for the second when the first would do, because a standing agreement is more valuable to them than to you.
Where each one loses
PayID does nothing recurring: every payment is an act you perform, which is safe but forgettable when a bill is due monthly. Registering one also ties a phone number or email to your bank account.
PayTo is a standing authority, so approving one carelessly grants ongoing access to your account within the cap you accepted — a more consequential tap than sending a payment. Bank coverage is still growing rather than universal.
General information about payment methods available in Australia. Not financial advice. Fees, limits and features change — verify current terms with the provider before acting.