Behind on power or gas? Do this before borrowing

Skypay Connect · Updated August 2026 · All guides

Utility debt is the one category where borrowing should genuinely be the last resort - because the free protections are unusually strong, and disconnection is harder for retailers than most customers realise.

Your actual rights

• Every energy retailer must run a hardship program: payment plans based on what you can afford, and protection from disconnection while you stick to them.
• Every state runs energy rebates and concessions - and one-off emergency vouchers (like EAPA in NSW) exist for genuine crisis.
• The energy ombudsman in your state is free and retailers respond to it quickly.

The order of operations

Call the retailer, say the word "hardship", agree a plan you can keep, claim every concession you're eligible for - and only then, if a genuine shortfall remains across essentials, consider whether borrowing helps or just relocates the problem. A loan to clear a bill you could have put on a zero-cost payment plan is money given away.

One application, a panel of lenders

Rather than filling in the same form five times on five websites, Skypay Connect takes your details once and puts your application in front of multiple lenders whose criteria you may meet. When one is interested, you deal with that lender directly for the decision, contract and funding.

The honest bit

No matching service can promise you a loan, and you should be wary of any that implies it can. Lenders make their own decisions. What we can do is put your application in front of lenders whose criteria you have a realistic chance of meeting - once, quickly, with no cost to you for the matching itself.

Is the bank-connection step safe?

It's read-only, run through secure statement providers used across the Australian lending industry, and it exists because real transaction data lets lenders make fast, fair decisions instead of guessing from payslips. No one can touch your money through it.