Labour says it will intervene if the big banks don’t give smaller competitors fair access to the banking system, as part of a plan to shake up the sector if elected.<\/p>\n
“If the big banks won’t provide fair access, we’ll step in,” Labour commerce spokesperson Arena Williams said.<\/p>\n
She said the big four banks held around 85% to 90% of registered bank assets, leaving most Kiwis with “too few real choices”.<\/p>\n
Williams said Labour would keep Kiwibank 100% New Zealand-owned, but that more was needed.<\/p>\n
“One challenger isn’t enough \u2013 Kiwis deserve more competition and more choice across banking.”<\/p>\n
Under the plan, businesses offering digital wallets, prepaid cards or payment services would no longer have to become a full bank before they could compete.<\/p>\n
Instead, they would be licensed under rules matched to what they actually do.<\/p>\n
Labour says that would give payment companies a pathway to grow into digital banks. It points to how firms like Wise pushed traditional banks to make international money transfers cheaper.<\/p>\n
Customers could also choose to use government-verified identity when signing up with a new provider, cutting the paperwork involved in switching.<\/p>\n
Labour would also deliver secure, round-the-clock real-time payments by 2030.<\/p>\n
“National promised to shake up banking but three years later, the big four are still calling the shots,” Williams said.<\/p>\n
The morning’s headlines in 90 seconds, including the washup from the last night\u2019s election debate, and an NBA star shows up at a French rugby training. (Source: 1News)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Labour says it will intervene if the big banks don’t give smaller competitors fair access to the banking…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":623052,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[138,44152,8028,111,139,69,135,270122],"class_list":["post-623051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-chris-hipkins","tag-labour-party","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-politics","tag-vote-2026"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623051","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=623051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623051\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/623052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=623051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=623051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=623051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}