Opening a Bank Account

Opening a bank Account in New Zealand

Opening a bank account in New Zealand is easy all you usually need is two forms of identification 

In New Zealand all of the major banks will have ATMs in almost all towns and you can get lucky in really small out of the way places, at which point there's always the mighty EFTPOS (paying with a card in a shop) Your best bet is to look for an account that does unlimited transactions for $5 a month.

One of the easiest ways of opening a bank account in New Zealand from overseas is with www.bankdirect.co.nz: they are a purely online bank, although they will need to send a bit of paperwork to you for formal identification purposes. Fees can be kept cheap: if you opt to have no statements sent to you, there is no monthly charge at all, and EFT-POS transactions are then 20 cents each. Since you can do a cash advance at the same time as you buy something, you can make your banking very cheap indeed.

All NZ ATM's are linked, although there can be a service charge for using other bank ATM's. While bankdirect is a no-branch bank, it is owned by ASB (in turn owned by the Commonwealth Bank of Australia), and you can use ASB branches to get bankdirect counter service. The only reason you might want to do that is to make overseas payments. ASB and bankdirect are working hard to attract foreign, particularly Asian, clients, so they'll want to make it as easy as possible.
Kiwi Bank is one of the newest on the New Zealand banking scene. They are known for there low fees and being New Zealand owned.
NewZealandAtoZ banks with the National Bank (who are owned by ANZ) and we feel they satisfy all our banking needs.
This is not an endorsement for any one bank, as all have different fee structures for different types of accounts. You need to do this research.
There are many for banking options in New Zealand to choose from.