Nearly 200,000 Australians who had money wrongly taken from them in the robodebt scheme could miss out on refunds unless they update their bank details with authorities.
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Within weeks the government will start repaying debts taken from 373,000 people under the controversial scheme - an average of $1900 per person.
The scheme matched Australian Taxation Office and Centrelink data to claw back overpaid welfare payments, but was ruled unlawful last year.
The repayments will total more than $700 million.
There are some 7000 people owed more than $7000 each who will have to be paid in instalments because of protective limits on how much Centrelink can pay in a single hit.
Government Services Minister Stuart Robert said about 190,000 of those who would get money back were existing clients and could be repaid straight away.
But the other 183,000 people will have to supply their details.
"The government's just not geared to do refunds, it doesn't have a system for it," Mr Robert told the National Press Club in Canberra on Tuesday.
"We'll reach out to say come to myGov, update your bank details and as soon as they're updated we'll pay you."
He anticipates it will take until November for everyone to do so.
The 373,000 people are those who had a debt raised against them using the income averaging method since 2015.
Income averaging methods have been used since 2007.
But Mr Robert said the government didn't have a computer system specifically for that purpose until 2015, so it doesn't know who had debts raised against them in that way beforehand.
Australian Associated Press
