Feature Support

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This guide is relevant for customers of both our one-off or enduring account connectivity APIs.

Official open banking connections offer similar functionality to an equivalent classic Akahu connection.

This guide describes some key differences with official open banking connections and highlights some changes to be aware of when considering how the move to official open banking connections may affect your Akahu related functionality.

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Important information about payments

This guide does not yet address some details related to enduring payment consents. Please check back soon for more details relating to payments. If you're a current Akahu customer using payment functionality, we'll reach out to you directly once this information has been published.

Product types

The following table describes the product types supported by each bank's official open banking API.

¹ Transactions are not supported for some ASB loan accounts.

Business accounts

Currently there is variable support for business accounts from official open banking APIs. This is roughly aligned with the existing level of business account support via classic Akahu connections.

The open banking regulation requires that all business bank accounts are supported for data access requests, and that all single-signatory business accounts are supported for payment initiation via open banking APIs. Payment initiation from multi-signatory accounts is currently considered out of scope.

MBIE has announced that coverage for accounts that are only accessible via separate business internet banking platforms will not be enforced until 1 June 2026. Until then, support for business accounts via official open banking APIs will be variable and incomplete. The current status of business account support for each bank is listed below.

ANZ

All business accounts that can be accessed using the ANZ goMoney mobile app are supported for data access and payment initiation. This excludes multi-signatory accounts.

The customer must have the ANZ goMoney app installed on their mobile device and be signed in to an ANZ customer account which has access to the business bank account in order to authorise a data access or payment initiation request.

❌

The current level of business account support from ANZ is non-compliant with the open banking regulations due to the lack of support for data access for multi-signatory accounts. This requirement will be enforced by MBIE from June 1 2026.

ASB

Business accounts can only be connected for data access or payment initiation via a personal ASB customer account.

Some customers already have their business accounts linked to their personal ASB customer account for convenience. Those that don't will need to call ASB to request that their business accounts are linked to their personal account before they can connect them using open banking.

The customer must have the ASB Mobile app installed on their mobile device and be signed in to a personal ASB customer account which has access to the business bank account in order to authorise a data access or payment initiation request.

❌

The current level of business account support from ASB is non-compliant with the open banking regulations. This requirement will be enforced by MBIE from June 1 2026.

BNZ

Business accounts can only be connected for data access or payment initiation via a personal BNZ customer account.

Some customers already have their business accounts linked to their personal BNZ customer account for convenience. Those that don't will need to call BNZ to request that their business accounts are linked to their personal account before they can connect them using open banking.

❌

The current level of business account support from BNZ is non-compliant with the open banking regulations. This requirement will be enforced by MBIE from June 1 2026.

Westpac

All business accounts that can be accessed using Westpac One (web or mobile app) are supported for data access and payment initiation. This excludes multi-signatory accounts.

❌

The current level of business account support from Westpac is non-compliant with the open banking regulations due to the lack of support for data access for multi-signatory accounts. This requirement will be enforced by MBIE from June 1 2026.

Adding and removing accounts

Open banking authorisations can only be modified by the user directly with their bank. There is no way to remove accounts from an open banking authorisation programmatically.

Because of this, we are unable to support the DELETE /accounts/{id} API endpoint for accounts connected using official connections. This endpoint will continue to work for accounts connected via classic connections, but will return a 400 error response for accounts connected via official connections.

If you currently provide a way for your users to remove individual accounts in your app using this endpoint, we recommend making the following changes for all connection types for consistency:

• Remove the ability for the user to revoke your app's access to individual accounts.
• Provide a "manage accounts" option which sends the user to the Akahu OAuth flow. We will send them on to their bank if they choose to add or remove accounts from an official connection.
• Provide an option for the user to revoke your app's access to each authorisation using the DELETE /authorisations/{id} endpoint. There may be multiple accounts connected using a single authorisation. Use the _authorisation attribute to group accounts by authorisation.

Account data fields

The account information that Akahu makes available to your application via our API will remain largely the same for accounts connected using official connections.

There are two notable differences to be aware of, which may affect your integration. These are described in more detail below.

Availability of account holder name

For accounts connected via a classic connection, Akahu provides the name (or names) of all account holders in the meta.holder field of the account item returned from our API (only applicable if this data is included in the scope of access requested by your app).

For accounts connected via official connections, the value returned in this field may be incomplete or unavailable in the following scenarios:

Joint accounts

If an account is jointly held, only the name of the person who authorised the data sharing request will be returned in the meta.holder field (assuming that they are one of the account holders).

Akahu identifies this scenario with the presence of a new field, meta.has_unlisted_holders. You can use this field to determine that there are additional account holders. The identity of unlisted holders cannot be determined using official open banking APIs.

Delegate access

If the person who authorised the data sharing request is not an account holder, and the account is an individually held account (e.g. a parent who has authorised access to their child's bank account), the meta.holder field will not be available.

In scenarios where this field is unavailable, requests to Akahu's name verification API endpoint will fail.

Account type

Due to the implementation of some banks' open banking APIs, Akahu's ability to accurately determine the account type may be reduced.

When an account type cannot be determined, a fallback of CHECKING (enduring access API) or DEPOSITORY (one-off access API) will be assigned by Akahu.

Account attributes

Due to data availability limitations when using official open banking APIs, Akahu is unable to accurately determine some attributes for accounts connected using this method.

• TRANSACTIONS - Akahu assumes that all accounts connected using official open banking APIs have transactions available, even though some do not. Because of this, there may be instances where the TRANSACTIONS attribute is assigned incorrectly.
• PAYMENT_TO - Akahu has to assume that all BECS-addressable accounts (those with a standard New Zealand bank account number in the format XX-XXXX-XXXXXXX-XX) can receive payments. We are not aware of any scenarios where this assumption is incorrect, however the determination of the PAYMENT_TO attribute now relies on this assumption. This may not be as robust as the explicit checks we are able to to make for an equivalent classic connection.

Transaction data

Transaction data availability

Transaction data availability via official open banking APIs is approximately equivalent to classic Akahu connections, with the following notable exceptions:

ASB

• Transaction data is unavailable for most ASB loan accounts (excludes Orbit revolving home loans).
• The name of the transaction counterparty (payee) is unavailable for direct debits and bill payments¹.

Westpac

• Transaction descriptions are unavailable for all credit card transactions².

^1,2Due to these issues, we are not currently migrating customers to official open banking connections from ASB or Westpac if their use case requires transaction data.

Transaction date

In some cases, the value provided in the date field may differ to the date field that is available from the equivalent classic connection:

• Transaction dates sourced from official open banking APIs may be missing a time component.
• The date field may have different semantics. For example, where the date sourced from a classic connection reflected the date that the transaction took place, it may instead reflect the date that the transaction was settled by the bank.

Transaction type

Due to the implementation of some banks' open banking APIs, Akahu's ability to accurately determine the transaction type may be reduced.

When a specific transaction type cannot be determined, a fallback of CREDIT or DEBIT will be assigned by Akahu.