Back
Frequently Asked Questions
Strategy & Transformation
What is Paymark’s transformation journey about?
We are on a journey to transform our business from being New Zealand’s leading plastic card payments processor to New Zealand’s leading payment provider. We want to be New Zealand’s leading network for all types of interactions, payments, digital identity loyalty and more, anywhere on any device.
Why are we going through this transformation process?
The transformation drives growth by scaling our current ecommerce and open banking products and by developing new ones (Global Online Pay, Online EFTPOS, Online EFTPOS - Repeat Pay, Direct Pay, Paymark Contactless, Digital Identity). It will help us stay compliant with schemes and create value beyond basic processing. By moving to the cloud with a customer-centric Future Switch, we’ll accelerate onboarding, simplify compliance, and enable easier distribution of these existing and future products. This is a five-year hybrid journey to a cloud-enabled, more resilient platform.
How will our transformation benefit our customers, particularly, Enterprise, banks, partners and consumers?
Our transformation will benefit our customers by delivering an open, unified payments platform that simplifies integration for banks, partners, and enterprises, while expanding payment options (including card-free methods) and stronger identity/loyalty features. Our customers will gain by faster onboarding, lower costs, enhanced security, and new open-banking-enabled services that drive growth and deeper engagement with their customers.
How will our transformation benefit our customers, particularly, Enterprise, banks, partners and consumers?
We’re transforming now because traditional switching revenue is shrinking (now 18% of EFTPOS and 90% from banks/merchants), making us vulnerable to market shifts—especially as mag-stripe tech will not exist by 2030. With non-bank acquiring for scheme processing rising (Stripe, Adyen, Cuscal), we’re shifting to cloud-enabled, open banking solutions to stay compliant, competitive, and to deliver broader value beyond payments
Open Banking
What is open banking and why is it so good?
Open banking is a core driver of New Zealand’s digital growth, enabling secure, easy access to payment data and services. We’ve advocated for open banking in NZ for many years, and while our capabilities aren’t widely recognised yet, we believe in its value and see a lot of growth opportunities for our customers, New Zealand, and Paymark through it.
What is open banking and why is it so good?
Online EFTPOS is an open-banking, card-free recurring payment that uses established APIs rather than traditional card networks. It also avoids card-scheme fees and funds are generally settled overnight. Because no card data is stored and the payment doesn’t go through card schemes, neither the merchant nor the payment is subject to PCI DSS, which is the set of security rules for handling card numbers. The security for APIs is in accordance with international best practice and in accordance with industry standards.
What makes Online EFTPOS more secure than other kinds of transactions?
Online EFTPOS (open banking) payments are typically more secure because the customer authenticates directly with their bank, the merchant never handles or stores card data, and the transaction uses tokenization and bank level security—reducing data exposure and PCI scope compared with traditional card scheme payments that transmit and store PAN, expiry, and CVV.
What is open banking and why is it so good?
Online EFTPOS continues to grow each year in New Zealand, with more and more merchants offering it and more kiwis using it each year. To date, nearly 1 million Kiwis have used Online EFTPOS, and in the last 12 months purchases totalled over NZ$300 million — a 45% increase on the year before.
Technology
Why aren’t we ‘fixing’ terminals?
Terminal hardware as we know it has a finite shelf-life & the market is saturated
We will not repeat mistakes of the past (we have tried almost everything, remember?)
Instead of focusing on the hardware itself (including distribution, maintenance, lifecycle management) we will be providing apps that:
- Mean terminal vendors no longer need to build and certify their own software – they can take our terminal app instead
- The terminal app can go on a terminal, phone or POS system – it will not be hardware format limited
- Terminal app will be a way to distribute new features to merchants, quickly
- It will be able to connect to other apps, so merchants can use Direct Pay and Identity
- For enterprise merchants, we will partner to provide a bundled service
Cuscal
How do Cuscal’s leadership values fit our transformation journey?
Cuscal’s leadership values align with New Zealand’s transformation by focusing on Secure, Extend, Expand and Drive—building a compliant, resilient gateway and switching platform while reducing complexity.
Security underpins everything we deliver, ensuring trust and regulatory alignment. We extend our core switching capabilities to support seamless in-store and online experiences, while expanding into new products and services such as Online EFTPOS, Direct Pay, and Digital Identity. Together, these are driven through cloud-based distribution, enabling scalable, customer-centric delivery across channels.
This five-year hybrid journey emphasises strengthening our secure foundation, extending platform capability, expanding product offerings, and driving sustained growth through phased innovation and delivery.
Copyright ©2026 Cuscal Paymark All rights reserved.
Main Paymark site →
Back
Frequently Asked Questions
Strategy & Transformation
What is Paymark’s transformation journey about?
We are on a journey to transform our business from being New Zealand’s leading plastic card payments processor to New Zealand’s leading payment provider. We want to be New Zealand’s leading network for all types of interactions, payments, digital identity loyalty and more, anywhere on any device.
Why are we going through this transformation process?
The transformation drives growth by scaling our current ecommerce and open banking products and by developing new ones (Global Online Pay, Online EFTPOS, Online EFTPOS - Repeat Pay, Direct Pay, Paymark Contactless, Digital Identity). It will help us stay compliant with schemes and create value beyond basic processing. By moving to the cloud with a customer-centric Future Switch, we’ll accelerate onboarding, simplify compliance, and enable easier distribution of these existing and future products. This is a five-year hybrid journey to a cloud-enabled, more resilient platform.
How will our transformation benefit our customers, particularly, Enterprise, banks, partners and consumers?
Our transformation will benefit our customers by delivering an open, unified payments platform that simplifies integration for banks, partners, and enterprises, while expanding payment options (including card-free methods) and stronger identity/loyalty features. Our customers will gain by faster onboarding, lower costs, enhanced security, and new open-banking-enabled services that drive growth and deeper engagement with their customers.
Why are we transforming our business now, and not later in the future?
We’re transforming now because traditional switching revenue is shrinking (now 18% of EFTPOS and 90% from banks/merchants), making us vulnerable to market shifts—especially as mag-stripe tech will not exist by 2030. With non-bank acquiring for scheme processing rising (Stripe, Adyen, Cuscal), we’re shifting to cloud-enabled, open banking solutions to stay compliant, competitive, and to deliver broader value beyond payments
Open Banking
What is open banking and why is it so good?
Open banking is a core driver of New Zealand’s digital growth, enabling secure, easy access to payment data and services. We’ve advocated for open banking in NZ for many years, and while our capabilities aren’t widely recognised yet, we believe in its value and see a lot of growth opportunities for our customers, New Zealand, and Paymark through it.
What makes Paymark’s Online EFTPOS different to card payments?
Online EFTPOS is an open-banking, card-free recurring payment that uses established APIs rather than traditional card networks. It also avoids card-scheme fees and funds are generally settled overnight. Because no card data is stored and the payment doesn’t go through card schemes, neither the merchant nor the payment is subject to PCI DSS, which is the set of security rules for handling card numbers. The security for APIs is in accordance with international best practice and in accordance with industry standards.
What makes Online EFTPOS more secure than other kinds of transactions?
Online EFTPOS (open banking) payments are typically more secure because the customer authenticates directly with their bank, the merchant never handles or stores card data, and the transaction uses tokenization and bank level security—reducing data exposure and PCI scope compared with traditional card scheme payments that transmit and store PAN, expiry, and CVV.
What are the usage statistics for Online EFPTOS in New Zealand? How does it compare to other methods of payment?
Online EFTPOS continues to grow each year in New Zealand, with more and more merchants offering it and more kiwis using it each year. To date, nearly 1 million Kiwis have used Online EFTPOS, and in the last 12 months purchases totalled over NZ$300 million — a 45% increase on the year before.
Technology
Why aren’t we ‘fixing’ terminals?
Terminal hardware as we know it has a finite shelf-life & the market is saturated
We will not repeat mistakes of the past (we have tried almost everything, remember?)
Instead of focusing on the hardware itself (including distribution, maintenance, lifecycle management) we will be providing apps that:
- Mean terminal vendors no longer need to build and certify their own software – they can take our terminal app instead
- The terminal app can go on a terminal, phone or POS system – it will not be hardware format limited
- Terminal app will be a way to distribute new features to merchants, quickly
- It will be able to connect to other apps, so merchants can use Direct Pay and Identity
- For enterprise merchants, we will partner to provide a bundled service
Cuscal
How do Cuscal’s leadership values fit our transformation journey?
Cuscal’s leadership values align with New Zealand’s transformation by focusing on Secure, Extend, Expand and Drive—building a compliant, resilient gateway and switching platform while reducing complexity.
Security underpins everything we deliver, ensuring trust and regulatory alignment. We extend our core switching capabilities to support seamless in-store and online experiences, while expanding into new products and services such as Online EFTPOS, Direct Pay, and Digital Identity. Together, these are driven through cloud-based distribution, enabling scalable, customer-centric delivery across channels.
This five-year hybrid journey emphasises strengthening our secure foundation, extending platform capability, expanding product offerings, and driving sustained growth through phased innovation and delivery.
Copyright ©2026 Cuscal Paymark All rights reserved.
Main Paymark site →
Back
Frequently Asked Questions
Strategy & Transformation
What is Paymark’s transformation journey about?
We are on a journey to transform our business from being New Zealand’s leading plastic card payments processor to New Zealand’s leading payment provider. We want to be New Zealand’s leading network for all types of interactions, payments, digital identity loyalty and more, anywhere on any device.
Why are we going through this transformation process?
The transformation drives growth by scaling our current ecommerce and open banking products and by developing new ones (Global Online Pay, Online EFTPOS, Online EFTPOS - Repeat Pay, Direct Pay, Paymark Contactless, Digital Identity). It will help us stay compliant with schemes and create value beyond basic processing. By moving to the cloud with a customer-centric Future Switch, we’ll accelerate onboarding, simplify compliance, and enable easier distribution of these existing and future products. This is a five-year hybrid journey to a cloud-enabled, more resilient platform.
How will our transformation benefit our customers, particularly, Enterprise, banks, partners and consumers?
Our transformation will benefit our customers by delivering an open, unified payments platform that simplifies integration for banks, partners, and enterprises, while expanding payment options (including card-free methods) and stronger identity/loyalty features. Our customers will gain by faster onboarding, lower costs, enhanced security, and new open-banking-enabled services that drive growth and deeper engagement with their customers.
Why are we transforming our business now, and not later in the future?
We’re transforming now because traditional switching revenue is shrinking (now 18% of EFTPOS and 90% from banks/merchants), making us vulnerable to market shifts—especially as mag-stripe tech will not exist by 2030. With non-bank acquiring for scheme processing rising (Stripe, Adyen, Cuscal), we’re shifting to cloud-enabled, open banking solutions to stay compliant, competitive, and to deliver broader value beyond payments
Open Banking
What is open banking and why is it so good?
Open banking is a core driver of New Zealand’s digital growth, enabling secure, easy access to payment data and services. We’ve advocated for open banking in NZ for many years, and while our capabilities aren’t widely recognised yet, we believe in its value and see a lot of growth opportunities for our customers, New Zealand, and Paymark through it.
What makes Paymark’s Online EFTPOS different to card payments?
Online EFTPOS is an open-banking, card-free recurring payment that uses established APIs rather than traditional card networks. It also avoids card-scheme fees and funds are generally settled overnight. Because no card data is stored and the payment doesn’t go through card schemes, neither the merchant nor the payment is subject to PCI DSS, which is the set of security rules for handling card numbers. The security for APIs is in accordance with international best practice and in accordance with industry standards.
What makes Online EFTPOS more secure than other kinds of transactions?
Online EFTPOS (open banking) payments are typically more secure because the customer authenticates directly with their bank, the merchant never handles or stores card data, and the transaction uses tokenization and bank level security—reducing data exposure and PCI scope compared with traditional card scheme payments that transmit and store PAN, expiry, and CVV.
What are the usage statistics for Online EFPTOS in New Zealand? How does it compare to other methods of payment?
Online EFTPOS continues to grow each year in New Zealand, with more and more merchants offering it and more kiwis using it each year. To date, nearly 1 million Kiwis have used Online EFTPOS, and in the last 12 months purchases totalled over NZ$300 million — a 45% increase on the year before.
Technology
Why aren’t we ‘fixing’ terminals?
Terminal hardware as we know it has a finite shelf-life & the market is saturated
We will not repeat mistakes of the past (we have tried almost everything, remember?)
Instead of focusing on the hardware itself (including distribution, maintenance, lifecycle management) we will be providing apps that:
- Mean terminal vendors no longer need to build and certify their own software – they can take our terminal app instead
- The terminal app can go on a terminal, phone or POS system – it will not be hardware format limited
- Terminal app will be a way to distribute new features to merchants, quickly
- It will be able to connect to other apps, so merchants can use Direct Pay and Identity
- For enterprise merchants, we will partner to provide a bundled service
Cuscal
How do Cuscal’s leadership values fit our transformation journey?
Cuscal’s leadership values align with New Zealand’s transformation by focusing on Secure, Extend, Expand and Drive—building a compliant, resilient gateway and switching platform while reducing complexity.
Security underpins everything we deliver, ensuring trust and regulatory alignment. We extend our core switching capabilities to support seamless in-store and online experiences, while expanding into new products and services such as Online EFTPOS, Direct Pay, and Digital Identity. Together, these are driven through cloud-based distribution, enabling scalable, customer-centric delivery across channels.
This five-year hybrid journey emphasises strengthening our secure foundation, extending platform capability, expanding product offerings, and driving sustained growth through phased innovation and delivery.
Copyright ©2026 Cuscal Paymark All rights reserved.
Main Paymark site →