Industry · Payment Processing
Over the last twelve months New Zealand has changed more of what a card payment costs than at any time since interchange was first regulated in 2022. On 1 December 2025 the Commerce Commission's lower caps took effect, cutting the most a bank may collect on a domestic consumer credit card tapped or inserted in a shop from 0.80% to 0.30%. On 1 May 2026, for the first time, foreign-issued cards were capped as well. Meanwhile the bill that was meant to stop businesses passing card fees on to customers stalled after its select committee stage, and Parliament was dissolved on 1 October 2026 without debating it again.
This guide sets out what the caps are, what the providers that publish a price charge on top of them as of October 2026, what eftpos still costs, and where the surcharge ban stands going into the 7 November election. All dollar figures are New Zealand dollars unless marked otherwise.
Interchange is the fee the customer's bank collects on every card payment. The Commerce Commission regulates it under the Retail Payment System Act 2022, and its final decision of 17 July 2025 sets these caps on Visa and Mastercard:
Visa's New Zealand interchange page lists 0.30% in store and 0.70% online for its classic and gold credit cards, matching the caps. American Express is not covered by the caps at all, and the Commission has said it will track volumes on higher-cost networks such as American Express and buy now, pay later.
What you pay your provider is the merchant service fee, which bundles interchange, the networks' own scheme fees and the provider's margin. The Commission estimates New Zealand merchants pay about $1 billion a year in merchant service fees and that interchange makes up about 60% of that. It expects the 2025 caps to cut merchant service fees by about $90 million a year, but that estimate assumes acquirers pass on 90% of the saving, and nothing in the regime requires them to. The Commission monitors pass-through rather than enforcing it; its 2025 decision estimated that roughly 90% of the 2022 cut reached merchants, although its 2024 consultation paper had put the first-year figure at about 80%.
How much of the cut you see depends on how you are priced. On an interchange-plus contract, where the provider passes interchange through at cost and adds a fixed margin, a lower cap shows up on your statement automatically. On a blended rate, one percentage for every card, the provider keeps the difference unless it chooses to cut the rate. If you are on a blended rate and your provider has not mentioned the December 2025 cut, ask it whether your rate changed.
New Zealand's domestic debit network is unusual. A traditional eftpos payment, where the customer inserts or swipes a card, picks cheque or savings and enters a PIN, carries no per-transaction fee at the major banks; ANZ's merchant fee guide says plainly that eftpos transactions are free. You pay for the terminal instead. Paymark, which runs the main eftpos switch, charges a network fee of $18.90 plus GST a month per terminal, and Eftpos NZ, which sells Verifone terminals, charges $15 plus GST a month per terminal to connect to the Verifone network, on top of the terminal's own rental or purchase price.
The catch is that eftpos has no contactless version. When a customer taps a debit card, the payment runs over Visa or Mastercard and attracts the 0.20% debit cap plus your provider's margin. The Commerce Commission's 2025 decision says the eftpos network has failed to evolve to meet the needs of consumers who now prefer contactless or online payment, and as more customers tap, more of a shop's debit volume moves from free to paid.
Paymark itself changed hands this year. Cuscal, the Australian payments company, announced on 14 April 2026 that it had agreed to buy it from Worldline, and the sale completed on 29 May 2026. Its formal name is now Cuscal Paymark, but merchants still see the Paymark brand.
As of October 2026, from each provider's New Zealand pricing page, excluding GST:
Everyone else quotes. [Windcave](/reviews/windcave/), the Auckland company that builds its own terminals and can hold your merchant account, publishes no rates, and its merchant FAQ says acquiring agreements run for 36 months with cancellation fees. ANZ, BNZ and ASB do not publish card rates either; BNZ's packaged merchant plan is limited to businesses with up to $300,000 of net sales a month. Afterpay does not publish its New Zealand merchant fee, and Zip stopped accepting new New Zealand merchants and customers on 17 July 2026, letting existing customers use their accounts only until 16 August 2026.
If you are reading Australian comparisons, note that Square, SumUp and Zeller do not operate in New Zealand. Our guide to [Australia's surcharge ban](/blog/australia-card-surcharge-ban-october-2026/) covers the market next door, where the rules are now different.
The arithmetic shows why the 2025 cut matters more to some businesses than others. Take a $40 sale on a domestic consumer credit card tapped at a café counter. The most the customer's bank can collect is 12 cents. At Stripe's in-person starting rate of 2.6% + 5 cents the business pays $1.09, and at Shopify's 1.8% on its Basic plan it pays 72 cents. Online, on a $100 order paid with a domestic credit card, interchange is capped at 70 cents; the published price is $2.90 at Airwallex, $2.95 at Stripe or on Shopify's Basic plan, and $3.85 at PayPal.
Interchange is not the only cost under those prices, since scheme fees, fraud and the provider's own operation come out of the margin too. But on a blended rate, most of what a business pays is set by the provider, not by the regulator. A business with steady card volume, most of it in store, is the one most likely to save by asking a bank or Windcave for an interchange-plus quote and comparing it with the flat price it pays now.
The Retail Payment System (Ban on Merchant Surcharges) Amendment Bill passed its first reading on 16 September 2025, and the Finance and Expenditure Committee reported it back in late 2025, recommending by majority that it be passed. It never had a second reading. In February 2026 Winston Peters said it was going nowhere, and in March ACT leader David Seymour called it dead, while the then Commerce Minister, Scott Simpson, said no further decisions had been made. On 1 October 2026 his successor, Cameron Brewer, told the NZ Herald that work was continuing as the government considered the feedback, and Labour's commerce spokesperson, Arena Williams, said Labour would 'just get on and do it'.
Parliament was dissolved the same day for the 7 November election. Bills before the House lapse on dissolution, though a new Parliament can reinstate them, so whether a ban arrives now depends on who forms the next government. As drafted, it would ban surcharges on in-store eftpos, Visa and Mastercard payments, debit and credit, and would come into force one month after royal assent. Online payments and American Express would not be covered, though the bill lets the ban be extended later by regulation, and the select committee named both as examples.
Until then you may surcharge, but keep it to your real cost. The Commerce Commission's 2024 paper found that the average surcharge was about 2% while the average merchant service fee was about 1%, and noted that terminal providers usually set whatever surcharge rate the merchant gives them, so getting it right falls to you. The select committee's report cites the Commission's estimate that consumers pay up to $150 million a year in surcharges, $45 million to $65 million of it likely above merchants' reasonable costs. Since the December 2025 cut, a 2% surcharge on a domestic credit card is further from cost than it was.
