Monitoring

We want to hear from you – Interchange fee regulation draft decision

The Commission is responsible for promoting competition and efficiency across the retail payment system in New Zealand for the benefit of consumers and businesses making and receiving payments.

On 18 December 2024 we published a draft decision aimed at reducing fees paid by New Zealand businesses for accepting Visa and Mastercard payments.

We are seeking your views on the proposed simplified and lower interchange fee caps, as well as our supporting reasons for this draft decision.

Feedback can be submitted using the submission template found here. Feedback can also be provided using an online form tailored to consumers and businesses.

Consumer survey

Business survey

Submissions close 5.00pm, Tuesday 18 February 2025.

Initial market monitoring

Through 2022 and 2023 we are engaging with participants across different retail payment networks to increase our understanding of the retail payment system and inform where to focus our efforts to deliver long-term benefits for consumers and merchants.

As part of our ongoing market monitoring role, in August 2023 we published our assessment of the impact of pricing limits imposed on domestic interchange fees from November 2022. It includes an estimate of how much businesses are benefiting through lower merchant service fees for accepting contactless and credit card. payments because of the pricing limits

Previous updates on our monitoring work are available under the project timeline below.

Merchant research

In 2022, we asked Kantar Public to survey New Zealand merchants to better understand their experiences and perspectives on the retail payment system.

From Kantar’s report, and some additional work we undertook, we published our observations on how well the retail payment system is currently serving merchants.

Both reports can be accessed below.