How sanctions affect international payments

Sanctions are restrictions on trade and financial transactions and can affect international payments. We follow sanctions laws from New Zealand as well as those from relevant overseas sanctions authorities.

We recommend that you are familiar with sanctions and their impact before conducting transactions offshore. More about our Sanctions Policy.

How sanctions may affect you

Delayed or blocked payments

All international payments made through us must follow our sanctions policy. In some cases we may need to:

• request more information about a transaction before we can process it
• delay or reject a transaction where it falls outside our policies or lacks enough information
• freeze (block) funds and report it to the relevant sanctions authority.

Restricted banking services with some countries^

With few exceptions, we do not support any direct or indirect transactions with:

• Afghanistan
• Belarus
• Cuba
• Iran
• Myanmar
• North Korea
• Russia
• Syria
• regions of Ukraine not controlled by the Ukrainian government, including Crimea, Luhansk, and Donetsk regions, and parts of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions
• Venezuela.

Blocked online services in some countries^

Access to our online services, including the BNZ app and Internet Banking, is blocked while in:

• Cuba
• Iran
• North Korea
• Syria
• regions of Ukraine not controlled by the Ukrainian government, including Crimea, Luhansk, and Donetsk regions

You can use our online services once you have left these locations.