BNZ second bank to support Apple Pay in New Zealand

The Bank of New Zealand, better known as BNZ, on Monday announced it will become the second major financial institution to support Apple Pay in New Zealand, further expanding the fledgling payment solution's reach into smaller international markets.

BNZ failed to set a date for integration, but the bank said customers will be able to provision a number of Visa-affiliated cards for use on iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Mac once the service launches, reports Stuff. An advertisement posted to BNZ's website notes Apple Pay support will arrive sometime in October.

The upcoming addition is in response to customer feedback, according to BNZ director of products and technology David Bullock. Whether BNZ members also asked the bank to introduce support for rival contactless payments services like Android Pay or Samsung Pay is unknown.

"More and more retailers are accepting it," Bullock said of Apple Pay. "There's a fairly high acceptance rate in New Zealand."

Apple Pay first landed in New Zealand almost one year ago with initial support from ANZ Bank, but the payments platform has faced an uphill battle toward wide adoption.

Retailers and consumers in the region are inured to another contactless solution in eftpos, a card-based system that does not charge usage fees. Credit card payment processors, on the other hand, charge fees for each transaction, which in New Zealand runs at an average 1.7 percent for credit cards and 1 percent for debit cards, the report said.

As in other markets where credit cards have yet to penetrate, merchants often put minimum purchase limits on transactions. These restrictions, combined with the already mature eftpos system, could put a damper on Apple Pay adoption.

When it launches at BNZ, Apple Pay will include support for BNZ Advantage Visa Platinum, BNZ Advantage Visa Classic, BNZ Advantage Visa Business, BNZ Flexi Debit Visa, BNZ Lite Visa, BNZ Visa Classic and BNZ Visa Platinum cards.

Apple continues to build out its fledgling payments initiative after a 2014 launch, most recently integrating global FeliCa support into iPhone 8, iPhone X and Apple Watch Series 3 devices. The additional hardware support could open doors to other Asian countries that rely on FeliCa to process contactless transactions.

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5 Comments

lowededwookie 1173 comments · 16 Years

About 7 years ago

Seriously cool. Still waiting on Co-Operative Bank to support it but I believe its cards are run through Westpac so no holding the breath there.

The big two in NZ though is going to see a great push for Apple Pay in NZ and I guess once Kiwibank gets their act together then maybe just maybe Westpac will get their heads out of their bums and support it as well.

kitatit 68 comments · 11 Years

Bank of New Zealand is owned by NAB (National Australian Bank) which is one of Australian's thug cartel banks blocking Apple Pay. Hopefully the feedback from BNZ customers will make NAB give us Apple Pay in Australia.

Sorry banks, you don't get to wear the pants this time. We will never choose you before Apple.

Have fun NZ, I'm jealous!

lostkiwi 640 comments · 18 Years

EFTPOS and ApplePay are indeed different systems as my compatriot LW noted earlier. However almost every retailer uses one of approximately 2 EFTPOS terminals (ICT250 and VX820) and so for the average consumer the distinction between the two systems is meaningless.

This is because as of May this year all terminals have to be compliant with the latest PCI standards and that meant that essentially all payment terminals have the capability to accept contactless payments like ApplePay and PayWave.
However because of lecherous Visa/MC fees many retailers turn that capability off because they have razor thin margins as it is.
Only chain stores with more than $10 mil annually in transactions qualify for the lower rate which is why your local dairy probably won’t take contactless payments (even though they charge something like $7 for a bottle of milk 😒).

One of the major reasons I left BNZ was because they didn’t have ApplePay. They have however had AndroidPay since December 2016. That being said they were a pretty good bank to deal with (as far as banks go anyway).

I’m pretty stoked that a second major bank in NZ now run ApplePay. If we can get the CC fees down somehow (regulation???) then we can get some serious market penetration for ApplePay here.