BNZ flips switch on Apple Pay in New Zealand

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.

BNZ first announced Apple Pay integration earlier this month, saying customers would be able to provision eligible Visa cards by the end of October.

As promised, the service is now live and can be used to pay for items wherever contactless payments are accepted.

"We know our customers want an exceptional experience that will allow them to pay quickly, easily and securely on a range of devices here, online and overseas. We've been listening as they have been asking for Apple Pay and it's hugely exciting to be able to say it's here", said David Bullock, director of products and technology at BNZ.

BNZ in its announcement today provided a primer on Apple Pay, touting the technology's security and privacy features. For example, instead of storing credit card information on devices like iPhone and iPad, Apple Pay assigns a unique device account number that is encrypted and stored in the Secure Enclave. This number, along with a one-time, dynamically generated security code, is used to authorize payments.

Apple Pay on BNZ supports a number of Visa cards including 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.

Two weeks ago, Bullock said BNZ's decision to add Apple Pay compatibility was in response to customer feedback. Currently, Apple Pay is only accessible by two banks in New Zealand after the service went live on ANZ Bank's network last year.

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.

The BNZ integration arrives as Apple is primed to launch the service in four more countries. On Sunday, platform chief Jennifer Bailey said Apple Pay will debut in Denmark, Finland, Sweden and the United Arab Emirates in a matter of days.

5 Comments

Soli 9981 comments · 9 Years

About 7 years ago

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).

lowededwookie 1173 comments · 16 Years

About 7 years ago

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.

mattinoz 2473 comments · 9 Years

About 7 years ago

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.

dempson 62 comments · 17 Years

About 7 years ago

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.

mcdave 1927 comments · 19 Years

About 7 years ago

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.

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