ACI Worldwide participated in MinterEllisonRuddWatts’ Paying it forward: Mordernising New Zealand's payment system symposium in March this year.
It was a day-long, robust, and inspiring discussion with a selection of the nation’s leaders discussing the payments system we need to build collectively to secure New Zealand a leading position in today’s global economy.
We celebrated the fact that New Zealand businesses can sell online in seconds, manage inventory in real time, and serve customers across borders. We appreciated that the payments system has started to catch up with that always-on economy, including through 365-day interbank payment processing, which allows payments on weekends and public holidays.
But we also acknowledged a critical reality: the fact that all of this is still not the same as a modern payments system.
Progress, but not keeping pace
New Zealand’s payments infrastructure has not yet made the leap to real-time, data-rich capability that can support local efficiency and stronger connection with the global economy.
Many businesses still use infrastructure that slows cash flow, adds administrative work, and keeps transaction costs higher than they need to be.
New Zealand’s current payment systems are falling behind international practice.
Why this matters to business
Slow or uncertain settlement can increase the working capital a business needs. Manual reconciliation can absorb time inside finance teams that are already stretched. High transaction costs can put direct pressure on margins.
Payments are often treated as back-office plumbing, but they are part of the infrastructure New Zealand needs to compete in a modern digital economy. New Zealand’s low ranking in the OECD’s 2025 Digital Government Index (35th out of 42 countries) also shows why digital infrastructure cannot be treated as a narrow technology issue.
What real-time systems would change
A true real-time payments system is not just about moving money faster. A true real-time payments system would let businesses better embed payments and data flows in their business processes. Businesses that can receive confirmed and usable funds immediately, use richer transaction data in real time are able to reduce the uncertainty that slows reconciliation, fulfilment, payroll, inventory ordering, and decision-making.
The impact on SMEs
For small and medium-sized businesses, the impact can be immediate. A food wholesaler may have delivered an order, paid drivers, and replaced stock before the customer payment has fully cleared. A trades business waiting on several customer payments may delay ordering materials for the next job, even after the work has been approved. An online retailer may absorb payment costs on every order while also managing freight, returns, and customer expectations.
These are not abstract payments issues. They affect how businesses manage cash, staff, suppliers, and growth.
Services older systems cannot support easily
Real-time payments would remove some of this friction, while also supporting services that are difficult to build on older payment systems. A request-to-pay feature would allow a business to send a digital payment request to a customer for approval. Proxy payments would allow someone to pay using a phone number or email address instead of a bank account number. The rich data would allow automated reconciliation at the line-item level on an invoice – a requirement for any business.
Payments infrastructure designed for immediate movement and richer data would also support embedded payments, real-time payroll, faster gig economy payouts, and better fraud detection.
Moving money instantly, 24/7, significantly reduces risk across the payment system by eliminating settlement delays and minimising exposure between transaction initiation and completion.
Faster payments also require stronger safeguards, including confirmation of payee, richer transaction data, and real-time transaction monitoring with payment-specific controls.
The global connection
The same infrastructure question extends beyond New Zealand. As a small, open economy dependent on trade, tourism, and cross-border services, New Zealand needs payments capability that aligns with global markets.
Comparable economies have already made real-time payments part of their core infrastructure. Australia has the New Payments Platform, the United Kingdom has Faster Payments, Brazil has Pix, India has UPI, and Singapore has PayNow. These systems are changing expectations for how quickly money moves and how easily payment services can be integrated into digital platforms.
The risk for New Zealand
For New Zealand, the strategic risk is becoming domestically efficient but globally disconnected.
For exporters, faster and clearer cross-border payments would improve cash flow and reduce reliance on short-term financing. For tourism operators, they could reduce friction for merchants and visitors. For digital businesses and fintechs, they would make New Zealand easier to integrate into regional and global platforms.
Interoperability from the start
This relies on payment interoperability, where domestic payment systems connect across borders so money can move between markets with less delay, cost, and uncertainty.
New Zealand has already removed the calendar-based delay from interbank payments. The next task is to build infrastructure that gives businesses certainty at home, protects trust as payments accelerate, and allows money to move across borders as efficiently as goods, services, and data.
To continue the conversation, or to discuss what modern payments infrastructure could mean for your organisation, please contact Emma Geard or ACI Worldwide.
About the authors
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Trent Gunthorpe is General Manager and Head of Pacific at ACI Worldwide, where he leads across payments infrastructure, real-time payments, fraud, AI and banking modernisation. He has held senior leadership roles at American Express, GE, Cuscal and ASL, bringing deep regional and customer-led experience across Australia, New Zealand and the broader Pacific.
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Philip Bruno is Chief Strategy and Growth Officer at ACI Worldwide, a global payments technology company focused on real-time payments orchestration for banks, billers and merchants. A former partner in McKinsey & Company’s New York office and co-lead of its Global Payments Practice, he brings global payments strategy and implementation expertise to conversations on payments modernisation and real-time infrastructure.
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Emma Geard is a Senior Associate at MinterEllisonRuddWatts, specialising in the complex and rapidly evolving legal and regulatory landscape governing banking and payment systems. Her expertise spans traditional banking regulations (e.g., prudential regulation, consumer protection, anti-money laundering) and emerging areas such as open banking, digital payments, and cryptocurrency.
