What is a Non-Agency Payment (NAP)?
If CSA is collecting your child support, you can ask CSA to recognise payments made directly to the other parent or a third party as child support payments. These payments are known as non-agency payments (PDF 550K) or direct payments, and may be in the form of cash or items or services agreed to by both parents (such as children’s clothes or car repayments). Either parent can advise CSA that a direct payment has been made. CSA will ask the receiving parent to confirm that the payment, or the value of goods or services, was intended as child support. If you often use these sorts of payments to meet your child support liability, and both parents agree, it may be easier for you to make a child support agreement or private collect arrangement, rather than reporting the direct payment each time.
