At Afterpay, we're committed to ensuring that customers can purchase with confidence while spending responsibly. As part of this commitment, and in line with New Zealand's laws and regulations we will review credit reports when increasing spend limits for existing customers and when new customers sign up with Afterpay.
We are also required to report credit activities to relevant bureaus to help maintain an accurate record of your credit history.
What does this mean? From the 23rd of July 2024, we will be performing credit checks for all new customers who sign up with Afterpay in New Zealand as part of our standard procedures. We will commence credit reporting from August 2024.
When we’ll be performing credit checks and what they mean for customers:
- For existing customers, we’ll perform a soft credit check when assessing whether we can increase their spend limit. Their payment history and other varying factors will determine the amount that we increase their limit. We will collect consent before performing any checks or providing information to credit bureaus and customers will only need to provide consent once, and we handle the rest with utmost confidentiality and care.
- For new customers, we’ll perform a credit check as part of our assessment of their application to join Afterpay. This enquiry may be visible to other lenders and may impact their score. We’ll collect consent for these checks when they sign-up for an Afterpay account.
What you need to know:
- You don’t need to do anything for this change and the checkout process will remain the same. The only difference is we will obtain consent from customers the next time they place an order either online, through the Afterpay app.
- What information do we report on? We will be reporting customer account details such as open date, account number, overdue status and days overdue (if their account is overdue).
What to do if your customers want more information on credit checks? If you get enquiries from customers who are seeking further information surrounding credit checks or if they have any concerns, you may direct them to our Help Centre or they can get in touch with us Afterpay via the Help section in the app and we will be able to help.