7-day payment processing comes to NZ: What this means for you

7-day payment processing has come to New Zealand. But will this mean you need to adjust any internal processes? Let’s take a look.

365 days of payments from May 26

All of us have at some point tried to send or receive money through a direct bank transfer or automatic payment, only for it to stay in limbo over the weekend (and even longer on a public holiday). Payments made after 10pm on Friday wouldn’t settle until Monday or Tuesday.

7-day payment processing changes that.

For a while now, the country’s major banks have been hard at work setting up their systems so that their customers (you) can send and receive bank transfers any day of the year – 365 days, regardless of holidays.

From May 26, when you send a payment on Friday, it should settle on Saturday morning.

Which banks are now processing payments 365 days a year?

  • ANZ
  • ASB
  • Bank of China
  • BNZ
  • Citi Bank
  • HSBC
  • ICBC
  • Kiwibank
  • TSB
  • Westpac

Note: Each bank will still cease settlement processing each evening (usually around 10 p.m.) before commencing the following morning, as is the current practice.  

What will 7-day payment processing mean for you?

There’s very little you’ll likely need to do – this is a win for Kiwis, and won’t require much change.

That said, it’s a good opportunity to double check things and make sure you’re prepared for the quicker process. Go through all of your automatic payments, bills, direct credit payments and internal processes to ensure they’re set up to send money overnight (and there’s no expectation of waiting the weekend). 

You may also wish to consider if this change allows you to provision goods or services ordered online via POLi on weekends and public holidays sooner, in order to provide your customers with an improved service.

This makes POLi even quicker compared to other payment types

If there’s ever been a time to add POLi to your online store, it’s now.

POLi was already fast compared to other digital payment types. Whereas most take a few days to transfer (credit cards, for instance, have a lag of up to three business days), POLi payments would settle within the day, except weekends and public holidays.

Now that weekends and public holidays are no longer an obstacle, payments made through POLi will generally always settle within 24 hours.

POLi isn’t just for e-commerce stores, either

Learn more about how you can add POLi to: