Opening up a bank account in New Zealand is very straight-forward and can even be done online, with some Identification. You may have to provide extra information to activate your account and sometimes visit a local branch.
Which bank to choose, that’s a whole other story. ANZ is the largest bank in New Zealand with 30% of the market share. One bank, Kiwibank, is even owned by the Government of New Zealand.
In this article we explain what you need to do to open up a basic account with a number of New Zealand banks. We provide links to some banks and also provide a video from a respected source, who runs through the different types of accounts from different banks.
Remember, we're not financial advisers, we're just passing on information that's provided by the banks to help you understand some of your options.
Some of the banks refer to a RealMe account of EasyID. EasyID is an online identifcation system often used in the financial sector. RealMe is a government-run online identification system. Here's a video that explains what RealMe is: