Get a payment license in New Zealand.

None, because none exists. A payments business registers on the Financial Service Providers Register under section 11 of the FSP Act 2008 for each service it provides, joins an approved dispute resolution scheme under section 48(1) and complies with the AML/CFT Act 2009 as a reporting entity. The Companies Office states the limit of that plainly: being registered as a financial service provider does not mean that you are licensed or regulated in New Zealand.

None. No minimum capital, own funds, net tangible assets, bond, guarantee or insurance figure appears anywhere in the FSP Act 2008 or in the Financial Service Providers (Registration) Regulations 2020. Section 13 asks only that the applicant is not disqualified under section 14 and holds any licence another enactment requires. What stands in for capital is dispute resolution membership, anti-money-laundering supervision, directors' duties under the Companies Act 1993 and, where client money is held, the trust and segregation duties of sections 431V to 431ZJ of the FMC Act 2013.

NZ$300 plus GST for the application, an FMA levy of NZ$600 plus GST on registration and NZ$11.30 plus GST for each criminal history check. Every year after that, NZ$75 plus GST for the annual confirmation plus the FMA levy for your class: NZ$660 plus GST for a Class 7 provider, NZ$3,600 plus GST for a regulated client money or property service, NZ$18,200 plus GST for a derivatives issuer.

The Act sets no decision period, and none is published. Criminal history checks take between two and five working days. Where the Registrar refers an application to the Financial Markets Authority under section 15B, the Authority must give at least ten working days for submissions before it can direct a rejection. Plan on three to six months from first call, most of it spent on the company, the AML programme and the bank account rather than on the registration itself.

That is the plan the law was amended to stop, and it is the first thing we test. Sections 15A and 18A let the Financial Markets Authority block a registration, or direct that one be removed, where registration would create "a false or misleading appearance" about the extent to which the applicant "provides, or will provide, financial services in New Zealand", provides them "from a place of business in New Zealand", or "is, or will be, regulated by New Zealand law". The procedure is in sections 15B and 18B: at least ten working days of submissions before a rejection, at least twenty before deregistration, and an appeal to the High Court under section 42. A registration that exists to be quoted in marketing is the exact fact pattern those sections describe.

At four points. Selling forward or non-deliverable foreign exchange to retail customers makes the firm a derivatives issuer, and section 41 of the FMC Act 2013 requires a licence for a regulated offer. A redeemable wallet balance can answer section 8(1)(a), a right to be repaid money owing by a person, and section 8 contains no prepaid or stored-value exclusion, so the answer turns on whether a Schedule 1 exclusion reaches the product, which is settled case by case rather than read off the page. Regulated financial advice, as section 431D describes it, needs a financial advice provider licence. Holding client money needs no licence and still carries the duties of subpart 5B of Part 6.

One director must live in New Zealand, or live in an enforcement country and be a director of a body corporate incorporated there, under section 10(d) of the Companies Act 1993. Regulation 12 of the Companies Act 1993 Regulations 1994 prescribes a single enforcement country: Australia. Other directors face no residency rule, since the FSP Act tests disqualification under section 14 rather than residence. The company also needs a registered office and an address for service in New Zealand.

Yes, and an official source says so. The Department of Internal Affairs wrote in August 2023 that many money remitters in New Zealand have experienced difficulties opening, or maintaining, bank accounts to enable them to transact their money remittance services. It also recorded that some remitters use accounts obtained or operated without telling the bank what the account is for, and said it does not endorse that practice. No official source sets a standard or a timeframe for account opening, so we sequence the work around it and plan for it rather than promise a date.

In the ordinary case, no. A payments firm is not a registered bank and not a licensed deposit taker: the Deposit Takers Act 2023 draws its perimeter at the business of borrowing and lending money under section 5(1). Under the Financial Market Infrastructures Act 2021 the Minister may designate a systemically important payment system on the Reserve Bank's recommendation, which is discretionary rather than compulsory. What did change is access: the Reserve Bank widened Exchange Settlement Account System criteria in March 2025 and opened the final phase on 23 September 2025, with payment service providers named among the entities that may apply.

Price at the front door. New Zealand asks no capital at all and NZ$300 plus GST to register, against initial capital of EUR 350,000 for a UK authorised e-money institution and base capital of S$100,000 to S$250,000 in Singapore, with a security deposit on top for a major payment institution. What you give up is the badge: the register is not a licence, and the Financial Markets Authority can strike off a registration that trades on the country's name. The United Kingdom answers within three months by statute and Singapore scales its licence tiers with transaction volume, so both are the better home for a firm that needs to say it is supervised. For a business with real New Zealand or Australian operations, this is the cheapest serious base of the three.