Kiwi bank to charge fee for international transactions, including $NZ

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Forums › Finance and wealth management › Kiwi bank to charge fee for international transactions, including $NZ

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eracode

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#3420870 3-Oct-2025 09:30

dafman:

What is AMEX? I remember a credit card provider from the 80's with a similar name, but even at that time few merchants accepted them and their billing and service was atrocious. They surely can't still be a thing?

Originally American Express - and still officially called that.

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#3420879 3-Oct-2025 09:55

pdh:

What is AMEX? I remember a credit card provider from the 80's with a similar name, but even at that time few merchants accepted them and their billing and service was atrocious. They surely can't still be a thing?

One of NZ's charming little idiosyncrasies is its almost total fixation on Visa & Mastercard.

The rest of the world does use a few alternatives - and AMEX has long been one of them (since 1850). It currently has about 140 million cardholders and is the world's 60th biggest company.

As an AMEX user, I never think twice about proffering it when overseas - as (eg) 99% of merchants accept it in North America. It's points system has paid for several of our overseas flights - so it's been an attractive card to use.

I used them briefly about 20 years ago. They had a promotion that offered a free travel suitcase if you joined up. The suitcase never arrived. I rang and complained three times over several months, nothing. Then one day, after I had long given up, a suitcase arrived out of the blue. A few days later, a second one turned up. Then a third.

Their billing service looked like it was from the 70's. I cut up the card and forgot about them. Once every couple of years a random statement would arrive in the post. They eventually ceased.

Never used them overseas, but merchant acceptance in NZ was patchy at best.

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#3420891 3-Oct-2025 10:20

pdh:

What is AMEX? I remember a credit card provider from the 80's with a similar name, but even at that time few merchants accepted them and their billing and service was atrocious. They surely can't still be a thing?

One of NZ's charming little idiosyncrasies is its almost total fixation on Visa & Mastercard.

The rest of the world does use a few alternatives - and AMEX has long been one of them (since 1850). It currently has about 140 million cardholders and is the world's 60th biggest company.

As an AMEX user, I never think twice about proffering it when overseas - as (eg) 99% of merchants accept it in North America. It's points system has paid for several of our overseas flights - so it's been an attractive card to use.

People avoid it simply because of the name, the high merchant fees, the slow settlement, the fact that they still insist on allowing customers to bypass the pin prompt and sign for things, the total lack of communication with retailers before doing a chargeback as if this is the US where card fraud is common. Oh, and its probably because of the pin bypass that a stolen card was used in store too.

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#3420900 3-Oct-2025 10:56

eracode:

Having read all this, I’m wondering about airline ticket purchases.

Was recently buying Emirates tickets. Auckland to UK is priced in NZD. Munich to Auckland is priced in EUR, if looked at separately. But on a ‘multi-city’ ticket, it’s all priced in NZD. There’s clearly some FX conversion going on somewhere.

Just checked my CC transaction details for the multi-city purchase and there’s no ‘FX transaction fee’ thing showing - I forget exactly what it’s called. I wonder if this would be caught by KB’s little scheme.

Going by reading it all depends on where the merchants bank account is

Qantas and Emirates for example have an NZ Merchant bank account so in this example there is no fee, money goes into an NZ account

Apple, Jetstar, are examples where there is no NZ Merchent account even though they charge in NZD using Dynamic Currency Conversion makes it look like an NZD transaction

These will get pinged under this scheme

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#3420906 3-Oct-2025 11:06

I think the best thing to do is make this cost kiwibank more by calling up and disputing every time this happens, even on a $30 temu transaction. It has to hurt them more than it earns them to have their call centre hammered with disputes. If kiwibank get away with this crap then the others will follow.

Mind you. Wise card is a thing.

Richard rich.ms

eracode

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#3420924 3-Oct-2025 11:42

nztim:

Going by reading it all depends on where the merchants bank account is

Qantas and Emirates for example have an NZ Merchant bank account so in this example there is no fee, money goes into an NZ account

Apple, Jetstar, are examples where there is no NZ Merchent account even though they charge in NZD using Dynamic Currency Conversion makes it look like an NZD transaction

These will get pinged under this scheme

So it will likely be ‘hit and miss’ - with the customer having little indication of whether the new fee will be changed or not.

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#3420928 3-Oct-2025 11:58

jonb:

… I have a Warehouse Purple Visa card … actually one of the better ones for cashback rates …

I am interested in this and a quick search said the effective cashback rate is $0.67 per $100 spent.

This compares to $1.12 on Visa Advantage Platinum.

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#3420950 3-Oct-2025 12:31

The Warehouse purple card annual fee is $55. From memory, the Kiwibank charge fee is 1.85%. Therefore, you would need to have over $3,000 of offshore transactions each year to make the switch feasible - anything under this and the Kiwibank charges add up to less than the Warehouse annual card fee. It's frustrating, but averaging say $60 offshore per month, it's only $13 a year, is it worth worrying about?

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#3420952 3-Oct-2025 12:37

dafman:

The Warehouse purple card annual fee is $55. From memory, the Kiwibank charge fee is 1.85%. Therefore, you would need to have over $3,000 of offshore transactions each year to make the switch feasible - anything under this and the Kiwibank charges add up to less than the Warehouse annual card fee. It's frustrating, but averaging say $60 offshore per month, it's only $13 a year, is it worth worrying about?

Yes, because you are supporting them charging it by continuing to use them.

Richard rich.ms

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#3420965 3-Oct-2025 13:02

I am currently with Kiwibank and will be looking at getting a CC for the first time because of this change, only ever had debit cards.

I always budget within my means, have no current loans and confident i can transfer/pay the balance monthly to avoid the interest.
I am not looking to min/max rewlards like points or cashbacks etc.
I am looking at using it for online purchases like Steam games and for subs for streaming i.e Netflicks.
So I don't need a super high limit on the card either.

I am looking at these three because they do not have an annual fee, excluded AMEX because it is hit and miss with some merchants.

ASB Visa Flex
ANZ Low Rate Visa
Fee Free Mastercard (Westpac)

So far they look farily similar, ASB's looks the best due to the lowest % rates but since I am going to be paying it off in the monthly window, it isn't that big of a perk.
Happy if anyone has 2 cents or things to watch out for.

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#3422081 6-Oct-2025 12:34

Its a little concerning to see this practice sneak in and really risks a 'own goal' for KB. Hopefully it doesn't catch on as its going to be hard to determine which merchant will incur this fee vs which won't.
It does create some interesting issues for Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Netflix, spotify etc as I suspect they'll be the first port of call on 'Why is my $9 monthly sub $9.18?'.

I've never used the dynamic currency services (as they tend to be poorer than paying the 2% foreign currency fee + Visa/MC conversion rate) but it doesn't compute sense.

I do recall when I was with Kiwibank on their initial Airports credit card, getting prompted whether I wanted to pay euros at the Rotorua baths.

Here in Australia, I was taken a little back to see that the main banks charging 3% for foreign currency conversion and there were some outliers charging 3.5%. Thankfully, there are a number of debit and credit offerings who offer 0% foreign currency fees (including a number of sub-brands of the Australian banks who own the big 4 NZ banks).

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#3422089 6-Oct-2025 12:57

The customer outrage will be huge. I don't see Kiwibank keeping this charge for very long.

Regarding Cards, I have been an Amex NZ member since 2008. The Membership Rewards Points cards are incredibly lucrative if you know what you're doing and choose the correct point redemption and pay off the balance in full every month. Plus they give promotional rebates throughout the year which are effectively discounts off the Annual Fee. I don't go much out of the way of my normal spending to redeem them but I regularly get rebates equivalent to 50% or over 100% of the Annual Card Fee. Acceptance is approximately 85-90% of physical places I shop and closer to 90-95% by dollar value.

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#3422179 6-Oct-2025 14:28

dafman:

The Warehouse purple card annual fee is $55. From memory, the Kiwibank charge fee is 1.85%. Therefore, you would need to have over $3,000 of offshore transactions each year to make the switch feasible - anything under this and the Kiwibank charges add up to less than the Warehouse annual card fee. It's frustrating, but averaging say $60 offshore per month, it's only $13 a year, is it worth worrying about?

don’t you get a warehouse discount if you use that card though. Also I think some banks have a zero fees card.

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#3422247 6-Oct-2025 17:46

richms:

Gem visa is another one that is slow to get payments onto the card. Often I was wanting to use the 6 months interest free on something but didn't have enough on the card to do it, and the delay is absurd.

You can get ASB low rate visa that has 6 months interest free on purchases >$1,000

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