Diana Clement – NZ Herald, 20 September 2026
Open banking is here. What can you do to make the most of it?
For years, using third-party financial apps in New Zealand meant breaking your bank’s terms of service and handing over private passwords.
Not anymore. Driven by new law, open banking has quietly arrived, giving Kiwis a safer, seamless way to budget, borrow and build wealth without the traditional paperwork.
After years of a slow crawl, New Zealand’s banking system has officially been dragged into the “open banking” world, and that is revolutionary for customers. Even if many aren’t aware of it yet.
Until December last year, many New Zealand banks warned that using apps that scraped bank account data, or payment services such as POLi, could breach their terms and conditions and put customers’ protection against unauthorised transactions at risk.
Thanks to the Customer and Product Data Act 2025, which was introduced after the banks failed to make sufficient progress voluntarily, we can now do this and much more.
ANZ, ASB, BNZ and Westpac went live with regulated open banking in December, and Kiwibank joined for payments in June. Kiwibank’s account-information service is due to follow in December.
“Open banking enables you and me to interact with our bank accounts in another piece of software.” Josh Daniell, co-founder of Kiwi fintech infrastructure provider Akahu, explained. Akahu provides the back-end connection between the banks and the apps customers want to use.
For the average person, it’s not the technology behind the scenes, but the tools we can now use without handing our banking passwords to third parties, that matter.
Banking and money management
PocketSmith, SortMe, and BudgetBuddie all now connect directly to your bank transactions, categorising spending, identifying hidden savings, and forecasting. Two more apps, Steady and Payday, are in final “beta” testing with a limited number of customers.
BufferBuilder, provided by Sorted, helps users build an emergency fund. They’re all budgeting on steroids compared to paper and pen or even Excel.
Feijoa is another useful app enabled by open banking. It’s designed to round up your daily transactions and automatically sweep spare cents into your KiwiSaver. According to the company, it is used by tens of thousands of Kiwis.
Investment and financial advice
Open banking allows an investment provider, with a customer’s authorisation, to initiate a payment directly from their bank account, with the investment then happening automatically, Daniell said. Fintech platforms such as Tiger Brokers, Blossom, and Simplicity are already using open banking in this way, either for one-off or recurring investments.
It’s a game-changer for financial advice. Daniell cited the example of AMP’s Moneyfit service, which, when clients allow it, can give a seamless feed of their financial data to advisers, who can act on changes and patterns, and provide timely and proactive advice rather than waiting for an annual review.
Loan and hardship
Open banking is also cutting paperwork for a variety of financial tasks. Loan and mortgage applicants can share their bank data with a few taps in the application app rather than uploading statements.
It is also speeding up KiwiSaver hardship applications, with Public Trust and Debtfix using the technology to gather the financial evidence needed at a stressful time in people's lives.
“Open banking extracts the necessary financial proof instantly.” Daniell said.
Open electricity and telecoms
The Government’s Consumer Data Right (CDR) framework is designed to extend beyond banking into sectors such as electricity and telecommunications to enable automatic price comparisons via services like Powerswitch. It should mean comparison sites can make much more accurate comparisons based on actual usage, rather than estimates.
The future
Developments overseas point to where open banking and other use cases could go as New Zealand catches up. Daniell points to the United States, where AI chatbots such as ChatGPT and Perplexity can securely access bank transactions, giving context to personal financial questions.
Eventually, AI could scan the market, surface better products and even handle the tedious task of switching providers.
“AI is very patient and happy to do those tasks.
