BNZ head of payment development Jonathon Dale said the low awareness wasn’t a barrier.
“People don’t go looking for open banking. They want to pay for something, keep on top of their budget, or apply for a loan with less paperwork, and open banking makes that easier,” Dale said.
Industry-wide data shows a similar pattern, though it lags BNZ’s by a month. Figures published by Payments NZ show more than 401,000 open banking payments worth over $130 million were completed across New Zealand in July, up 11% on June. Successful account information requests more than doubled in two months, from 8.7 million in May to 19.2 million in July.
Accreditation underpins trust
Before any provider can access customer data or initiate a payment, it must be accredited by the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), and it can act only within the permissions a customer has granted. Customers can also disconnect a service at any time.
That oversight now sits more firmly with MBIE. Under the Customer and Product Data Act 2025, the ministry leads open banking standards management, with the handover from the Payments NZ API Centre continuing after the centre closed on 30 September 2026.