sbiddle

With the government forced regulation of interchange banks are following through pretty quickly with changes.

Westpac just announced they're moving from APD1 per NZD85 to APD1 per NZD110 up to NZD7000 spend per month and 1APD per NZD220 when you go beyond that.

Beckett66

Banks have been faster to cut credit card earn rates than retailers have been to cut credit card surcharges. With the new Kiwibank earn rate, you earn back only $0.87 per $100 spent. So a transaction fee of 0.87% would break even (ignoring any other benefits like Status Points). Whereas 2% fees are still common. I've found myself suddenly using EFTPOS a lot. I've given up on chasing NZ status.

jimmyah

Is AMEX covered by this legislation? The AMEX Airpoints Platinum card at 1APD for $59 is more attractive by the day.

sbiddle

I too have started switching to EFTPOS again. There is zero point paying a surcharge and getting less back.

I do hope the ComCom start targeting retailers charging above cost fees as they're legally obligated to do - but some retailers have a problem that Stripe (as one example) are charging retailers 2.7% still whereas many retailers are paying around 1 - 1.5% tops.

AviationNZ

Nope, Amex weren't designated as part of the Retail Payments System Act, at least for now. Naturally in the future they may get included, but my guess is that's at least a few years away.

I have a funny feeling there was something in the Retail Payments System Act which spoke about the ComCom being able to introduce a merchant surcharging standard, limiting merchants from surcharging above fee cost. Not sure if this is immediate however, but my guess is we'll see excess surcharging decrease in the near future.

Beckett66

Yeah, it's section 30 that lets the Commerce Commission impose merchant surcharging standards. Under section 32(1)(c), these can limit merchant's payment surcharges. The Commission doesn't seem to have issued these standards yet. It's different for the network standards that the Commerce Commission can impose on companies like Visa and Mastercard under sections 17 and 20 of the Act. In that case, a default standard applied from 13 November (under clause 7 of Schedule 1 of the Act). It limits interchange fees to 0.80% as charged by Visa and Mastercard to merchants for credit card payments.

sbiddle

The Stripe 2.75% issue is an interesting one.

A retailer using Stripe and passing on this cost as a surcharge isn't going to be breaking the law.

The issue is that Stripe are charging an excessive fee - and from my read through the law a few months ago I'm not sure if there was anything in there that prevents them from doing this.

akl_cat

The retail payments system act sadly only covers the interchange fee component (what the merchant's bank pays to the issuer's bank) of the merchant service charge. Stripe's 2.75%+ merchant service charge bundles up a whole lot of fees in there (interchange fee, scheme fee, acquiring cost, gateway charge, their own margin etc.) so while the interchange component goes down they can happily up another component to keep the overall charge at 2.75%+. And you are right there is sadly nothing anyone could do (apart from moving to another payment processor).

sbiddle

I saw a copy of an email today that was published on Reddit.

It says that from the 20th Feb 2023 APD earn will drop to 1APD for every NZ110 spent, and lounge vouchers are being ditched.

It also says that it is "changing how status points are earnt to a 50% bonus on top of the staus points earns on eligible flights with Air NZ, ie you fly from AKL to WLG and would earn 20 status points, ANZ will then give you another 10 status points"

This really makes no sense to me so it'll be interesting to see when they advice customers and update their website. I can totally understand ditching the 1SP per NZD250 and moving to another model but to me this 50% bonus seems like something that's depending on the situation ranges from far less generous for some people to something that is waaaay too generous for others.

It'll be interesting to see the full changes when ANZ finally advise customers.

nzkarit

For which card? Or the entire program?

So if you currently earn >2/3 of SP flying you will better off.

Suppose it does mean the program is focusing on people who are bum on seat.

Will be interesting if they keep the status boost. And if there will be the seperation of 60% from flying and no flying.

The devil will be on the details

SpudGun

This was posted to reddit, and was specifically the ANZ Airpoints Platinum card.

My assumption is that the status points will accrue if paid for via ANZ card, in which case, it is not much use to me any more, I will switch to Amex.

Thai-Kiwi

Concur. Perhaps the overall $AP earn is too great and they want to re-balance SPs towards spend earned on flights ?

Sure as eggs that the outcome won't favour the customer - although some might. As you say, devil in the details…

kiwifrequentflyer

In practice, a 50% earn on flights when you are chasing Elite is not as much of a downgrade as it sounds.

For me to requalify for Elite, I need 1350 SP. Of that, 810 SP must come from from NZ metal, and then the rest from whatever else I choose.

Under this system, if I gained 810 SP from buying flights, I'd get roughly 400 SP as a bonus, for a total of 1200 SP.

Still short of what I need, but it is an interesting system.

It also benefits those that aren't big day to day spenders themselves on credit cards. If your only big cc expense is flights, then you'd earn a lot more SP this way.
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sbiddle

My credit card spend is declining rapidly... It's back to EFTPOS for lots of things for me.

The new changes introduced by the Govt have already backfired - we've seen credit card surcharges rapidly roll out and now become the norm at many retailers, and we've seen these rates still stuck at well over 2% at many retailers.

The Commerce Commission got badly own3d by the card companies in 2009 when they took them to court. History is now repeating itself.

kiwifrequentflyer

AMEX is still my #1 choice. But I am mostly using it to build up AMEX points, not APD.