At last - open banking is open for business

Saturday, 22 November 2025

Woman with credit card and laptop at table

Janine Starks is the author of www.moneytips.nz and can be contacted at moneytips.nz@gmail.com.

OPINION: Three clicks and boom, it’s done. I’ve made my first open-banking payment – a donation on the Givealittle website.

To be honest, I was left gazing at my phone in wonder. This thing surpasses the wildly impressive moments of my first eftpos and Apple Pay transactions. It’s revolutionary. When you’re buying online, it flips open your banking app, delivers a secure data message and you tap “approve”. That’s it.

Givealittle’s open-banking option is run by Volley (www.volley.nz), a financial technology company based in Wellington. They’ve just attracted investment from Rod Drury, the founder of accounting software company Xero.

It costs retailers 35 cents per transaction (any dollar value). Consumers use it for free.

The donation was made on the Givealittle website, from my phone;

I clicked the “open banking” payment option and selected my bank name (ANZ). It triggered my banking app to open, with face ID as security.
I approved the message: “Allow ANZ one-off payment requests”. I won’t see this screen again, as it gives permission for any payments via Volley.
My payment appeared on the screen; give-a-little, $10 and a reference number. I tapped the account I wanted to pay from and clicked the “approve” button.

To be honest, I didn’t quite believe it, so I did it all again with ASB. It was even easier. My app opened up, looked at my face, and the payment was waiting to be approved. Boom. Done. The one-off permission screen ANZ had didn’t appear as ASB has eliminated it.

The new Volley app is cause for excitement among open-banking advocates, and banking nerds generally.

Next up I tried a Givealittle donation from my laptop. I chose ANZ bank and a QR code appeared. I pointed my smart phone camera at the laptop to scan it and my bank app opened with the payment ready to be approved.

But listen, this thing gets even better.

Hnry, the accounting company, is partnering with Volley. A personal trainer or massage therapist using Hnry can generate a QR code for in-person payments. The customer scans the QR with their camera, chooses the name of their bank and voila, the secure message opens their banking app and they tap “approve”. No chasing the money.

The real magic will arrive when the likes of Hnry and Xero decide to add open-banking to their invoices. No more scribbling down the account number, reference fields or the amount. No need to set up a new payee, or ensure the account name and number match. Its fully automated. Tap the link, your bank app opens and you click approve.

Given Rod Drury has taken a stake in Volley I can’t wait to see if Xero become early adopters. My gardener, Tim, sends his bill using Xero. I look at the email and think “oh, I’ll do that later”. An automated link would save me scribbling down details and lumbering through payment screens. Less payment friction gives quicker cashflow.

If you want to make payment requests yourself, download the Volley app.

You might need flatmates to pay for expenses. You might be a tradie wanting to bill a customer, or a sports club collecting subs from athletes.

The big four banks have all made Volley accessible from their apps, with varying degrees of efficiency.

The app holds your bank account number and lets you input an amount and reference. Tap “share” and you can WhatsApp or email an encrypted payment link to one person or a group.

Your flatmate, customer or athlete doesn’t need the Volley app. They get a simple email or message from you. They click the link; it opens their own bank app and they approve the payment.

The Volley app keeps a record of what requests have been paid and what haven’t.

The sheer beauty of an open-banking payment:

Money moves account to account directly, but neither party knows each other’s bank credentials. Big tick, security is top notch.

I didn’t have to type in a card number, expiry, CVC, get a code by text and pay a surcharge. That gets a massive cheer. Visa and Mastercard have their place (like charge-backs for physical goods), but lots of payments don’t require those benefits so we are wasting money.
The final benefit is worthy of a fireworks display. I didn’t have to put my customer number and bank password into a third party website like Poli or Windcave, a process that teaches customers it’s OK to share their banking credentials; a boon for scammers. Their tech has gone from being called “screen scraping” to the jargon “TPI”. Most people don’t know it stands for third party impersonation. Banks don’t support their login screen being impersonated. It needs to be urgently banned for payment use.

Open banking payments launch on December 1, 2025 for consumers and our large banks need to start blocking TPI tech. Responsible retailers need to move to an open-banking partner.

The banks available on Volley at the moment are ANZ, ASB, Westpac and BNZ. Kiwibank will appear next June.

As a pre-warning for BNZ customers, your bank is faffing about with extra steps. They’ll make you input your phone number at the start of the payment process as ID. It’s because they’ve hooked up Volley via their website and not directly into their app. Customers have to open the BNZ app manually to approve the payment, unlike ANZ and ASB where it is automatic. It’s disappointing they’re not aligning the customer experience, as it’s confusing for those with more than one bank.

A warning for ANZ customers – they haven’t got peer-to-peer payments working on Volley yet. I got a sad face pop-up screen. From December 1 they risk being fined, so it might be them with the sad face.

Readers should always seek specific independent financial advice appropriate to their own circumstances.

This article was amended to clarify that Rod Drury, not Xero, has invested in Volley.