It’s been a fast-paced and productive start to the year at the Payments NZ API Centre, with great momentum across all areas of our work programme. We were pleased to see the Customer and Product Data Act 2025 come into force on 30 March, a significant step in establishing a consumer data right framework for Aotearoa New Zealand.
We’re excited about this new phase, which promises increased innovation, competition and growth for the open data and open banking ecosystems in Aotearoa.
At the Centre, our focus remains on collaborating with the industry to deliver safe and innovative open banking solutions at pace, empowering consumers and businesses choice and enabling their financial wellbeing.
Read more in the update below.
Connecting and empowering the ecosystem
The open banking ecosystem in Aotearoa continues to grow, with the API Centre now comprising:
- 7 API Providers
- 27 Third Parties
- 515 Community Contributors.
So far this year we’ve welcomed 8 new Third Parties:
- EzyRemit
- AttractPay
- Datacom
- Windcave
- SISS Data Services Limited
- EARN Books Limited
- Emerge Group Limited
- Illion
Our Community Contributor membership is free to join and designed for individuals such as developers and API practitioners who are not yet ready to register as Standards Users. We encourage anyone interested in our API standards to contact our team to see how the Centre can support you or your organisation’s open data payments innovation journey.
Since the start of the year, our community of Standards Users have collectively contributed hundreds of hours of people time into our four cross-industry working groups, which covers API Centre Business, API Centre Technical, Accreditation and Partnering, and Customer and Safety.
The Centre has also been actively involved with a number of industry events, including recently running a free webinar at Techweek on Securing the Future – An API Centre Technical Deep Dive, the Te Hapori Matihiko Matauranga session on Māori Data Governance, and supporting teams selected for Creative HQ’s FinTech Lab 25.
In mid-June, we’ll be hosting The Hub - Pulse event to mark six years since the establishment of the API Centre, reflect on the milestones the industry has achieved together, and look ahead at what the API Centre is planning to deliver in the new regulatory environment. Invitations will be sent later today.
Subscribe to our mailing list to find out more about this event.
Building a stronger open banking economy together
With the new Customer and Product Data Act 2025 now in place, we’re pleased to see many of the industry-led changes we’ve championed reflected in the final legislation. The API Centre has played a pivotal role in shaping this work by leveraging our deep expertise in API and digital standards development and management.
We are committed to working closely with the CPD team at the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) to support a smooth and coordinated transition into the new consumer data right regime. Our goal is to align industry and regulatory objectives to establish transparent, clear, cohesive timelines, roadmaps and frameworks, to avoid any duplication of effort that might slow us down when it comes to implementation.
We look forward to arrangements being in place to enable us to work together to build a strong open banking economy underpinned by fast, secure and user-friendly data sharing that benefits all of Aotearoa.
Partnering project update
In August 2024, the Commerce Commission authorised the Centre to work with our Standards Users to develop a new partnering and accreditation framework which streamlines the process for Third Parties to partner with banks. We have since worked with 19 of our Standards User organisations in the Partnering working group to develop this framework and have made good progress.
To date this cross-industry working group has focused on defining the accreditation criteria, including security, organisational assessment, and fit-and-proper person requirements. We are currently looking at defining different classes of accreditation depending on business type, insurance requirements, and risk and liability. We will be able to share more developments in this space in the coming months.
Key milestones for 2025
Later this year, we’ll be delivering a performance standard, which will provide common settings for performance and availability and guidelines for handling service outages. As with all our standards, further iterations and improvements are in the pipeline as we learn and adapt from user experience.
We recently introduced new customer experience guidelines, demonstrating safer customer journeys and how intermediary experiences could look. These new guidelines are accessible, easier to read and aligns closely with our customer standards.
The API Centre has partnered with Māori data scientists from Nicholson Consulting – world leaders in indigenous data sovereignty – to develop best practice guidelines for data handling, grounded in the Māori Data Governance principles and framework. Our data handling guidelines provide a universal framework that supports all users, including Third Parties and permitted users, to align their data practises with broader principles of good data governance. We look forward to publishing the guidelines in mid-June.
Our open banking rollout continues to gain momentum as we approach the next industry milestone outlined in our Minimum Open Banking Implementation Plan. Together, the banks included in our plan serve more than 90% of banking customers across Aotearoa.
By 30 May, ANZ, ASB, BNZ, and Westpac NZ are expected to be ready to technically and operationally support partnerships with organisations using version 2.3 of our Payment Initiation API standard. This upgraded standard introduces key features like enduring payment consent and decoupled authentication, enabling more secure and user-friendly solutions.
By 28 November, these four banks will also have implemented version 2.3 of our Account Information API standard which adds more detailed transaction data, broader account coverage, and early support for joint accounts, helping third parties offer smarter, more personalised services.
Kiwibank is set to deliver equivalency with the other four banks during 2026, and we expect to see further implementation progress as consultation begins on delivery timelines for version 3.0 of our standards.