Sean’s Blog

I apologise for the delay in posting this update. I'd hoped the local accounts in NZ would be up and running by now, but after initial discussions with ASB and ANZ we are still working towards a solution.

We’ve been able to establish from both BNZ and customer feedback that the additional costs in transferring funds to New Zealand are;

For payments less than NZD 200, no fee

For payments above NZD 200 to a BNZ account, NZD 15 is charged

For payments above NZD 200 to a non-BNZ account, NZD 25 is charged

When depositing NZD to our Sydney account the costs seem to vary depending on the bank, but across the board they are ridiculously high. In general your NZ bank will charge you an international transfer fee of around NZD 15-25, the correspondent bank may take as much as NZD 25 to then pass this on to our bank. How they justify this I have no idea!

These additional charges reduce the savings that CurrencyFair can offer, however it can still be beneficial to use us compared to your bank. I did a quick comparison yesterday using my own online banking for a transfer from AUD to NZD.

To convert AUD 5,000 to NZD, my bank would charge me a transfer fee of AUD 22 (compared to our AUD 4), which is around NZD 28. The rate quoted was 1.2005 compared with CurrencyFair’s 1.2482, so a saving of NZD 238.50 on the exchange rate with CurrencyFair. My bank also warns me that there will be additional charges taken by the NZ banks, so most likely an additional NZD 25 for the correspondent bank charge and receiving charge as this is an international transfer.

In this case it is still much better to use CurrencyFair compared to the banks, due mainly to the far better exchange rate, although obviously the savings depend on how much you are transferring.

If you have any questions or would like me to help you do a comparison please just email theteam@currencyfair.com or seanbarrett@currencyfair.com and I would be delighted to assist.

We hope to have our NZ based account up and running again soon. Thanks for your patience and support in the meantime.