BNZ flips switch on Apple Pay in New Zealand

Topic Adjacent:

• The first New Zealand bank was added a year ago on 13 October 2016.
• Apple Pay went live 3 years ago on 20 October 2014
• In its 1st year 2 countries were added (United States and United Kingdom).
• In its 2nd year 9 countries were added (Canada, Australia, China, Singapore, Switzerland, France, Hong Kong, Russia, and New Zealand)
• In its 3rd year 5 countries were added (Japan, Spain, Ireland, Taiwan, and Italy), plus 5 other independent states (Isle of Man, Jersey, Guernsey San Marino, and Vatican City)
• In its 4th year at least 4 more were added today (Finland, Denmark, Sweden, and United Arab Emirates) and 2 more are slated to be added by the end of this year (Poland and Netherlands).

AppleInsider said:

Thought to be stymying growth in the region is eftpos, a mature card-based contactless solution that charges banks lower per transaction fees than credit card processors. Interestingly, eftpos last week announced Apple Pay compatibility with its mobile tap-to-pay service in Australia via cards issued through ANZ.

Please stop with this line. EFTPOS is not stymying anything. EFTPOS is a transactional system that ALL payments in New Zealand other than credit cards go through. As I mentioned in your previous article regarding BNZ, EFTPOS cards in New Zealand come in two flavours - standard EFTPOS bank cards or dual purpose EFTPOS/Debit (credit) cards. ALL credit and debit cards work in EFTPOS but they also add a credit function. EFTPOS is direct bank access and therefore limited by funds in bank as are debit cards. The only difference between Debit and EFTPOS is that a bank directly issues an EFTPOS card whereas a debit card is issued by the bank through Visa or MasterCard.

The debit card has the benefit of allowing online purchases as they act like any Visa or MasterCard card. EFTPOS doesn’t although they are implementing a trial for Internet EFTPOS but none of the heavy hitters in New Zealand retail are currently using it.

As far as I’m aware the only bank that doesn’t offer a debit card is TSB (Taranaki Savings Bank) and some of the even smaller banks. As such TSB currently has no ability to use Apple Pay or any contactless payment because their cards don’t support it unless you have a credit card which are all distributed in NZ by either Visa or MasterCard. However most cards being issued in the other banks are ALL at least debit cards.

EFTPOS is also NOT, I repeat NOT a contactless payment system. EFTPOS is, as I said, a transaction service that ties into the bank account. Think of it like WCDMA. WDCMA is not what cellphone calls go through it’s the back end system. On top of WCDMA is the cellular systems like LTE, 3G, CDMA, etc. EFTPOS is the same. Everything goes through EFTPOS but then gets routed to where they need to go and the fees are handled by the relevant parties themselves.

There is ZERO technical limitations for Apple Pay rolling out in New Zealand as most terminals at least in the next round of rentals are capable of handling contactless payments. In many respects NZ is more geared to contactless payments than America and UK. The hold up is 100% purely on the banks.

Soli said:

Topic Adjacent:

• The first New Zealand bank was added a year ago on 13 October 2016.
• Apple Pay went live 3 years ago on 20 October 2014
• In its 1st year 2 countries were added (United States and United Kingdom).
• In its 2nd year 9 countries were added (Canada, Australia, China, Singapore, Switzerland, France, Hong Kong, Russia, and New Zealand)
• In its 3rd year 5 countries were added (Japan, Spain, Ireland, Taiwan, and Italy), plus 5 other independent states (Isle of Man, Jersey, Guernsey San Marino, and Vatican City)
• In its 4th year at least 3 more are slate to be added by the end of this year (United Arab Emirates, Poland, and Netherlands)

Well to be fair Australia wasn't added so much as found to accidential work before legal proceding started. Then partially adddd in the third year and may expand in 4th but likely 6th year. 

AppleInsider said:

The Bank of New Zealand on Tuesday local time activated Apple Pay integration for customers living in New Zealand, making it the second major financial institution to provide support for Apple's service in the region. 

"region"? I think you will find that New Zealand is a country.

Interestingly, BNZ is offering Apple Pay even though it is owned by National Australia Bank, which is one of the three big banks in Australia which are doing everything they can not to support Apple Pay and promote their own system instead.

There is ZERO technical limitations for Apple Pay rolling out in New Zealand as most terminals at least in the next round of rentals are capable of handling contactless payments. In many respects NZ is more geared to contactless payments than America and UK. The hold up is 100% purely on the banks.

The issue is the bloody merchants disable contactless payments at the terminal because they don’t want to pay the fees.  And you can’t tell until you get the prompt! We’ve had the tech for a while but it’s deactivated.  This is just as infuriating as in the UK where many tills disable contactless payments over £30 even though about half went through OK at higher values using my iPhone.

I thought EFTPOS NZ (Verifone?) we’re stepping up their game to provide a cheaper alternative contactless transactor to Visa but I’ll have to check.