Heads up about same-day payment processing

Exciting news! Starting from May 26, 2023, banking in New Zealand is about to get a whole lot more convenient. Imagine this - all electronic banking transactions will be processed on the same day, every day of the week, and yes, that includes public holidays too!

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The Awesome

So, what does this mean for you? Well, whether you're sending or receiving payments, even between different banks, there's no need to wait for the next business day. Sold something over the weekend? No problem! The payment from the buyer will reach you on the same day. How cool is that?

Remember that payments might still take an hour or two to process, and this change is only for domestic transactions within New Zealand. This includes direct debits, direct credits, automatic payments, bill payments, and online/mobile banking payments.

One last thing: not every bank is participating. Here’s a list of the ones that are.

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Just a Heads Up…

If you have automatic or scheduled payments, you need to read this!

Before this change, automatic or scheduled payments that fell on a weekend or public holiday wouldn’t process until the next business day. This meant that, even if you didn’t have enough funds in your account to make the payment, you had a day or two to top up.

That buffer is goneburgers with this change, so it’s more important than ever to keep payment accounts nice and healthy. If there's not enough money in your account when the payment is processed, the payment could fail, and you might get hit with late payment fees (which sucks).

Overall though, this will mean you can receive and transfer money faster, which we reckon is a win-win. You just have to take some extra caution around scheduled payments, simple as!

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