Cardinia Shire Council × FlexiRates

Case study

FlexiRates partnered with Cardinia Shire Council to give ratepayers across the shire modern, self-service payment options — while reducing the manual work involved in managing those payments.

About Cardinia Shire Council

Cardinia Shire Council is a local government area in Melbourne's outer south-east, Victoria — one of the state's designated growth areas, with a fast-growing community of ratepayers. Like every Australian council, its revenue team is responsible for issuing and collecting rates while supporting residents who pay in a range of different ways.

The challenge

Rates are one of the least flexible bills many households face, and managing those payments is one of the more manual jobs a council rates team handles. Cardinia wanted to give ratepayers more modern, flexible ways to pay — without adding complexity or manual follow-up for staff.

The FlexiRates solution

Cardinia adopted FlexiRates, a rate payment platform built for Australian local government. It pairs two purpose-built portals:

• A ratepayer portal where residents set up card or direct debit payments, choose a weekly, fortnightly, monthly, quarterly or custom schedule, view their balance and history, and manage their account online at any time.
• A council admin portal that gives the revenue team a live view of schedules, successful and failed payments, dishonours and upcoming debits, plus reporting for reconciliation.

Payments are processed through a PCI DSS compliant system, with card details tokenised rather than stored. FlexiRates is powered by Bill Buddy, an Australian payment provider with more than two decades of experience in recurring and scheduled payments. You can read more about the platform on the For Councils page and our security approach.

What it delivered

For ratepayers, it meant a modern payment experience and the flexibility to pay rates in a way that fit their budget. For the council, it meant less manual admin, fewer routine phone calls, and clearer visibility over payment activity — visibility and controls designed specifically for local government.