ASB has secured a new partnership with online payments provider POLi, enabling digital payments to be processed via the bank’s Open Banking API.
POLi, an alternative to credit and debit card-based payments and among the most popular digital payments methods in New Zealand, allows users to securely transfer funds, near-instantly, to merchants directly from their bank accounts.
The new partnership will leverage ASB’s Open Banking API, which first debuted in May 2024, enabling ASB customers to execute merchant payments without sharing their usernames or passwords.
ASB said the new Open Banking-enabled payment method will be available to its customers “in… coming months”, appearing alongside existing payment options.
POLi is among the most popular payment methods in New Zealand, used by almost half of the banking population in the country.
Commenting on the partnership, ASB tribe lead for everyday money Michael Maclean said the New Zealand-first POLi partnership would help to advance Open Banking’s uptake in the country.
“POLi has the highest volume of online debit payments in the country, facilitating thousands of transactions every day for New Zealanders. We know scale and widespread availability is key to getting Kiwi consumers onboard with Open Banking.”
New Zealand’s competition regulator notes that around 15 per cent of eligible customers have executed an Open Banking payment using APIs (based on figures from the big four banks).
“This is encouraging and exceeds the levels seen to date in both Australia and the UK,” the Commerce Commission wrote in a 2024 report, further positing that New Zealand, a late adopter of Open Banking, is “on the cusp of realising [its] benefits”.
New Zealand’s own data sharing scheme is overseen by industry-run payments authority Payments NZ, which sets Open Banking standards and protocols.
ASB has now secured six Open Banking partnerships, including with home-grown paytechs Akahu, BlinkPay, Flik, Qippay and Volley.
POLi commercial director Andrew Simmonds hailed ASB as a leader in the country’s emerging Open Banking scheme, being the “first bank to offer up Open Banking APIs for our consumption”.
“[We’re] delighted to partner with them to provide Kiwi consumers an innovative and secure way to pay popular merchants.”
