New Zealand — Payments Detail

Part of the payments-domain skill. Specific caps, thresholds, and dates here are point-in-time — verify against the primary source (Commerce Commission, RBNZ, MBIE, Payments NZ, FMA, DIA) before stating as current.

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Bodies and who does what

• Commerce Commission (ComCom) — regulates designated retail payment networks under the Retail Payment System Act 2022: interchange pricing standards, surcharging standards, transparency, and access. Visa and Mastercard are the initially designated networks.
• RBNZ — Reserve Bank of New Zealand — oversees the payment and settlement system and operates the settlement infrastructure (ESAS).
• MBIE — Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment — administers the Customer and Product Data Act and open-banking designation/accreditation.
• Payments NZ — industry body that governs the core rails and sets the API standards used for open banking.
• FMA (Financial Markets Authority) and DIA (Department of Internal Affairs) — AML/CFT supervisors alongside RBNZ (sector-split).
• Office of the Privacy Commissioner — privacy breaches involving personal information under the data regime.

Rails

EFTPOS. New Zealand's long-standing domestic debit network — historically free to merchants and cardholders, which shaped low surcharging norms and a different competitive dynamic from Australia. Includes online EFTPOS (bank-to-bank for e-commerce).

Cards. Visa and Mastercard for credit and contactless/scheme debit.

Core clearing and settlement. Account-to-account payments run through Payments NZ's bulk electronic rails (direct credits/debits, bill payment) and settle across ESAS at the RBNZ. Settlement Before Interchange (SBI) is the interbank settlement arrangement. New Zealand does not have a consumer-facing real-time push platform equivalent to Australia's NPP; faster/real-time ambitions are being pursued through Payments NZ's next-generation work and the open-banking payment-initiation APIs rather than a separate national instant rail.

Interchange and surcharging

Under the Retail Payment System Act 2022, ComCom set an initial pricing standard capping interchange on Visa/Mastercard from November 2022 (first-ever NZ caps), then reduced them further:

• NZ-issued cards: lower caps from 1 December 2025 — notably in-person consumer credit dropping from around 0.80% to 0.30%.
• Foreign-issued cards: capped for the first time from 1 May 2026.
• Domestic personal debit: caps held (in the order of 0.00% in-person contacted, ~0.20% in-person contactless, ~0.60% online) to preserve room for smaller issuers and alternative networks.

ComCom can also issue merchant surcharging standards to keep surcharges cost-reflective. A legislative ban on card-payment surcharging (Visa/Mastercard) was progressing through Parliament in 2025–26, targeted to take effect around mid-2026 — confirm whether it has actually commenced before advising, as surcharging was still permitted (cost-reflective) during the transition.

Verify all figures and dates against comcom.govt.nz.

Open banking — Customer and Product Data Act 2025

NZ moved from an industry-led approach to a regulated Consumer Data Right under the Customer and Product Data Act 2025 (Royal Assent March 2025), modelled on Australia's CDR but designed to learn from its low uptake.

• Open-banking standards in force from 1 December 2025, incorporating Payments NZ's API specification (v2.3.x), covering data sharing and payment initiation.
• ANZ, ASB, BNZ, Westpac designated as data holders and live from 1 December 2025; Kiwibank phasing in (payments from 1 June 2026, customer data from 1 December 2026). Other deposit-takers may opt in.
• Banks cannot charge for the designated data transfers. MBIE oversees designation and accreditation; the Privacy Commissioner handles personal-information breaches.

AML/CFT

Governed by the AML/CFT Act 2009, with supervision split across RBNZ, FMA, and DIA depending on the type of reporting entity. Obligations cover customer due diligence (KYC/KYB), ongoing monitoring, and suspicious-activity reporting. There is no single dedicated PSP licence as in the AU reform; payment providers are caught via AML registration and FMA conduct/financial-services obligations.