What is Payments Direction?
Payments Direction is our cornerstone strategic programme to help the industry understand and prepare for the evolving future of payments. Many of our key work programmes over the years have had their foundations in this programme, including the Payments NZ API Centre, which leads the development of industry open banking standards in Aotearoa, 7-day payments, and more recently our payments modernisation work.
Our strategy team has delivered strategic plans, research and insights, opportunity assessments, exploratory investigations, and designed and tested strategic payment system and ecosystem-level innovations.
Working with the industry to lead strategic direction, together we continue to steer Aotearoa towards our vision of world class payments not just for today, but for generations of New Zealanders to come. We welcome sector input and while we do already engage broadly and closely with industry stakeholders and international counterparts, we’re always open to more views and feedback.
Our 2026 key priorities
We share milestone updates regularly in our ‘Stakeholder updates’ section, and you can sign up to our Payments Direction mailing list to be notified when we have new updates.
1. Payments modernisation - our payments modernisation work programme incorporates several workstreams that are already in progress, including:
- Next generation payments - we’re progressing work on the foundational pillars of the next generation payments system that will underpin payments modernisation and interoperability, including working closely with the Reserve Bank of New Zealand Te Pūtea Mātua to continue building on our foundational work.
- Digital identity opportunity assessment - an exploration of where digital identity can add value in payments or where system-level gaps exist, to help form an industry view on how this capability could fit into the payments system. We’ve also published a whitepaper on digital identity in the digital economy, outlining its current state and how it can help make payments safer in Aotearoa and will be releasing a findings paper soon.
2. System roadmap - when completed, we expect this roadmap to become a valuable resource for the industry, mapping out existing systems and capabilities, and highlighting areas of opportunity for further industry collaboration and innovation.
3. Strategic research and insights - we regularly release reports and insights to support innovation and strategic industry-led decision making.
Next generation payments consultation
Our public consultation on next generation payments, which closed in early 2025, has driven conversations about which digital payments capability the industry should prioritise that would best support the current and future needs of Aotearoa and our economy, people and systems. Our consultation paper outlined research and insights from leading local and international payments experts to assess and discuss the long-term modernisation of the core system, and the impact this would have on the broader ecosystem in Aotearoa.
The feedback we received from our consultation has shaped five strategic recommendations that continues to guide our strategic work programme, including:
- Develop a consolidated strategic roadmap
- Commit to the modular design approach
- Develop priority actions for the foundational pillars
- Explore the potential of digital identity to make payments safer
- Integrate next generation capabilities into the consolidated strategic roadmap
Why we’re doing this work
Although the current payments system in Aotearoa provides regular and reliable payments, we need to ensure it can be future proofed to meet the needs of the country, digital economy, customers and businesses for many more generations to come.
We want to help industry and wider stakeholders consider and deliver solutions that are safe and suited to our country, economy and unique payment networks. Our role in leading the development of strategy, facilitating ecosystem collaboration, and coordinating execution and delivery is vital to ensuring the payments system remains interoperable, innovative, safe, open and efficient as changes are made and embedded.
How we do our work
Our team regularly engages with stakeholders from across the industry and wider business community, on a direct basis and through workshops, working groups, committees and at events. On any given day, the stakeholders we engage with could include:
- Representatives from our Participant banks
- Representatives from our Member organisations
- Industry groups including standards and professional bodies, business forums and more
- Special interest and community groups
- Non-profit organisations with an interest in payments
- Local councils and affiliated organisations
- Regulators
- Government officials
- Payments experts and leading academics
- International counterparts including other payments associations
We sponsor, host and speak at industry events, and facilitate workshops, formal and informal meetings with key stakeholders and working groups to advance work and coordinate delivery.
Our work is supported by our Participants and Members, and we bring together the payments ecosystem to collaborate, contributing their time, insights, perspectives and relationships to the work we do.
Want to know more or get involved?
To receive updates about our work and be kept informed on progress and new opportunities, please sign up to our Payments Direction mailing list. You can also sign up to receive more general Payments NZ news and updates including our weekly Top Reads newsletter.
If you’re interested in being more directly involved with our work, contact our team who will get back to you soon.
In this section
Stakeholder updates
This year we’re continuing to modernise core payments, building on the strong foundations developed in partnership with industry through our next generation payments programme.
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