About open banking

In New Zealand, open banking is provided by your bank as part of the the Consumer Data Right (CDR), meaning it's a regulated part of our national payments landscape. Currently, all major banks are required to provide secure APIs to accredited data requestors for payment initiation and data sharing.

New Zealand's open banking journey has closely followed that of the United Kingdom, where open banking was established in 2018 as part of the European Payment Services Directive (PSD2).

Open banking has been in development in New Zealand since 2019 and became regulated by MBIE under the CDR in December 2025. You can find out more about this and view other participants on MBIE's website at the link below.

https://www.mbie.govt.nz/business-and-employment/business/consumer-data-right

Benefits

• No cards. Payments come straight from the customer's bank account, so there's no need to enter card details and no dependency on card networks.
• Lower fees. Payments are cheaper to accept (Volley charges a flat rate of $0.35, regardless of the transaction amount) and settle directly to your account, usually within an hour.
• Bank security. Customers authorise every payment (or recurring payment) in their own banking app, using their bank's own security measures.
• A simpler alternative to direct debit. Customers can securely setup recurring payments in a few taps in their banking app, getting rid of manual authority forms. Open banking payments do not have dishonour fees as with direct debit.

How does it work?

Volley uses open banking to let your customers pay you directly from their bank, without ever needing to enter credit or debit card. With most banks, payments are approved in a few taps in their banking app, making it safe, easy, and familiar for payers.

Payments made with Volley are confirmed instantly and irreversible once confirmed, making it suitable for a wide range of online or in-person points of sale. Payments are executed directly to your account and settlement takes place over the interbank payments network, so funds typically arrive in 1 hour, on weekdays and weekends, 365 days per year. Payments made after 11pm are settled at 9am the following day.

Open banking involves a different integration for every bank, with different APIs, consent flows, and limits. Volley simplifies all of that into a single object: the payment request. You create one request, and Volley handles the bank connections, consent, and settlement for you.

The authorisation flow

Open banking supports two types of authorisation flows: redirect and decoupled.

• Redirect: payers are redirected straight to their bank app (in some cases internet banking website) on their mobile device, and redirected back to Volley after approving the payment.
• Decoupled: payers enter an identifier (e.g. their phone number) and a notification is sent to their bank app to approve the payment. This is also known in the industry as Client Initiated Backchannel Authorisation, or CIBA.

Volley determines the best possible flow to present to customers based on their bank and device. We strongly prefer to use app-based redirect flows as this offers the best security for payers.

In most cases, customers will require their phone and their bank app to approve a payment. For customers on desktops, Volley presents a QR code that lets them seamlessly complete the payment on their phone.

Currently, BNZ does not support app-based redirection. Volley uses a decoupled flow with phone number for BNZ payers.

Bank coverage and limitations

Volley integrates with all major banks in New Zealand, currently ANZ, ASB, BNZ, Kiwibank, and Westpac. All features, including one-off and recurring payments, are fully supported by the banks we integrate with.

Payment limits

Banks have limits that cap how much an individual can transfer in one payment, or across all payments over a day. For Open banking, payments limits are mostly aligned with each bank's own limits for manual transfers within their app or online banking channels.

The table below shows current limits effective for Volley payments.

^*ANZ: ANZ has an additional limit of $1,000 per each individual recurring payment that can be executed. If you will make recurring payments exceeding this limit, get in touch.