Labour is putting the big banks in its sights as its election campaign zeroes in on the cost of living.<\/p>\n
In an announcement in Auckland on Wednesday, Labour vowed to make it easier for new banking and payment companies to compete with ANZ, ASB, BNZ and Westpac.<\/p>\n
Labour leader Chris Hipkins said more competition would give customers more choice and force banks to offer better prices and services.<\/p>\n
“Almost every Kiwi relies on a bank to get paid, pay the bills, buy a home or grow a business,” he said.<\/p>\n
Under Labour’s plan, smaller financial companies would face simpler rules if they wanted to offer services such as digital wallets, prepaid cards or payments.<\/p>\n
The big banks would also have to give smaller competitors fair access to important payment systems and banking information.<\/p>\n
Commerce spokesperson Arena Williams said Labour would ensure the country had a secure, “real-time payments system” running 24 hours a day, seven days a week in place by 2030.<\/p>\n
She said Labour would also make it easier for New Zealanders to switch banks or sign up with a new provider, allowing customers to use government-verified ID across different companies.<\/p>\n
“National promised to shake up banking, but three years later, the big four are still calling the shots,” Williams said.<\/p>\n
A Commerce Commission study in 2024 found the four big banks did not face strong competition, describing the sector as a highly profitable market with little aggressive competition on price. It recommended changes to make it easier for new players to enter and grow.<\/p>\n
The National-led coalition later agreed to all 14 of the commission’s recommendations, including moves to speed up open banking and give more weight to competition in banking regulation.<\/p>\n
Some of the groundwork to open the sector up is already under way, including new open-banking rules which came into force late last year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Labour is putting the big banks in its sights as its election campaign zeroes in on the cost…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":622787,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[138,219,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-622786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=622786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622786\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/622787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=622786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=622786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=622786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}