BNZ launches first bank in-app spend tracker as business comes back online

Bank of New Zealand (BNZ) unveiled a new personalised money tracking and categorisation feature in its app today.

The new feature can be found under a new tab named Activity in the BNZ app and is the first of its kind for a big New Zealand bank to be integrated into the existing banking app.

BNZ Executive General Manager – Customer, Products and Services, Dan Huggins, says, “Budgets only work when you know just how much you’ve spent and where. This is crucial information to help make good decisions, and now BNZ customers have it.

“We’re focused on helping customers do more with their digital banking and we know these insights are valuable,” says Huggins.

The app will automatically put spending into categories, such as groceries, pets, transport, and bills. Customers can also customise which spending goes where to personalise their insights. They can see their spending daily, weekly, and monthly, what their average spend is, and compare categories to show where their money is going.

Huggins says this is just the beginning: “We are here to help our customers be good with money. That’s not a static thing, and we see this as a joint venture with our customers and will continue to improve and increase its functionality based on their feedback and input.”

The approach has been successful with BNZ winning consecutive Canstar Bank of the Year – Online Bank awards in 2018 and 2019.

The new feature is available to all customers with a personal transactional account and an up to date BNZ app. BNZ is progressively enabling it across all eligible customers, starting from today. When it is enabled, a customer will see a welcome splash screen when they open their app.