A mother-of-two has found a loophole which allows her to buy $500 worth of groceries and petrol without spending any money upfront – but a financial expert has called it a ‘dangerous’ shopping strategy.

The savvy shopper from Melbourne took to social media to share the ‘potentially lifesaving’ hack in which a person can purchase an e-gift card for up to the value of $500 using her Zip Pay account without spending a dollar upfront, shares Daily Mail.

The online voucher allows an internet shopper to buy items from shops including Woolworths, Caltex and Coles – with no money being owed until the end of every month.

‘Most people know of Zip Pay and know that while fashion shops do have [Zip Pay options] in store, some places like Coles, Woolworths and Caltex don’t — or so we thought,’ the woman wrote.

‘I recently found there is a loophole around that. If you go to the Zip Pay website, you can purchase e-gift cards for Coles, Woolworths and Caltex that go immediately to your email to use as real cash.

‘Personally this week financially has been a hard one and I am so glad that I’ve found this loophole to help get me through this week until I can get paid again.

‘So, if you are ever short for food or petrol or anything else, you only need a Zip Pay account and you can buy these things without having to have the cash right then and there,’ she concluded.

Financial Counselling Australia chief executive Fiona Guthrie cautioned shoppers should try not to get ‘caught in a cycle’.

‘The trap of course is that when you borrow money to pay for something today, you start to get yourself caught in a cycle,’ Ms Guthrie told The Daily Telegraph.

‘When you pay the money back at the end of the month, you’re still going to have the same financial issues that you had at the start.

‘These apps confirm not enough people in Australia have enough money to get by … you would have to be an amazingly good money user to only use these apps as a one-off,’ she warned.

Zip Pay allows users to repay money in the amount they want and when they want.

They do charge a $5 fee for any balance left over in the account at the end of the month.

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