New Research Shows Late Payments Critical Issue For Business

Newly released research shows that chasing late payments is potentially costing New Zealand $1.5b per year in operational efficiencies.

The role of merchants, retailers and other businesses selling directly to the consumer, cannot be overstated in New Zealand’s economy. Retail sales reached nearly $100 billion in 2023. Factoring in total sector classifications in which merchants operate, the figure grows to about $449 billion.

The research, commissioned by Māori owned and led digital payments solution provider, BlinkPay, which included surveying 400 New Zealand businesses across a range of sectors. The research revealed 44.3% of respondents citing late payments were a critical problem, disrupting cash flow and creating operational bottlenecks, while 39.5% felt merchant service fees were too high, eroding already thin margins.

“Merchants’ success is intrinsically linked to Aotearoa’s economic health, these businesses are huge contributors to our economy, and the way that banking has traditionally worked is not serving them well. Our research shows that late payments, high fees, security concerns, customer disputes, and lack of adequate support all cause disruption and incur huge labour costs to businesses in New Zealand,” said Adrian Smith (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Hine), Chief Product Officer & Co-Founder, BlinkPay, who commissioned the research.

Smith argues that with the rollout of open banking in New Zealand, many of the revenue collection pain points that affect both large and small retailers in the country will be a thing of the past.

“Our findings drive a call to action for businesses to embrace innovations that can alleviate the payment-related challenges businesses face. Online and in minutes businesses can add BlinkPay to their websites as a payment option. Agreements with ASB, Westpac, BNZ, and ANZ, mean that customers' money is taken directly from their accounts and received in the merchant’s bank account that day,” continued Smith

Dr John Small, Chair of the NZ Commerce Commission, said, “I am grateful to BlinkPay for publicly sharing their primary research on payments pain points. This work will be of interest to the broader payments/fintech ecosystem, and to our own efforts to promote and enable innovative solutions. As I have been saying to anyone who will listen, there are great things brewing in the Aotearoa payments sector that will reduce costs and add value by solving problems you may not have even identified yet”.

About BlinkPay

Blink Pay Global Group Ltd is a leading New Zealand Open Banking gateway. It is Māori-owned, managed and funded. 

BlinkPay is at the forefront of developing payment services in New Zealand for Open Banking, which has been adopted in several countries and is delivering innovations in payments and services that utilise customer financial data.

How Blink PayNow works 

At the checkout on a BlinkPay-integrated website, customers select Blink PayNow and choose their bank. They are then redirected to their bank's portal, where payment details are pre-filled.

After reviewing and confirming the payment from their mobile banking app, customers are taken back to the merchant’s site with a successful payment notification.

No credit card details, no lengthy forms, just a few clicks.

Making it cheaper to do business

In addition to providing a user-friendly, secure and accessible payment option for customers, businesses using BlinkPay will also benefit from cheap fees. BlinkPay’s standard fee is 0.95% per transaction, capped at NZ $3. There is no cost to consumers who pay through the service.

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