Paying with ANZ Accounts

Why We May Delay Bitcoin Delivery

By Lightning Pay Team

 

At LightningPay, our mission is to make buying Bitcoin fast, easy, and safe. Most of the time, that means your payment is confirmed within seconds, and your Bitcoin is delivered straight away. However, if you're paying from an ANZ bank account via Akahu or PoliPay, there’s an important exception you should be aware of.

 

Why is there a delay with ANZ?

ANZ handles payments differently from other banks in New Zealand. In some cases, ANZ will send a confirmation message that a payment has been “sent,” but they may not actually deliver the funds at the same time. We’ve seen instances where the funds arrive hours later, or in rare cases, don’t arrive at all due to a fraud report or reversal.

To protect both our customers and our service, we delay Bitcoin delivery for payments made from new ANZ accounts. This gives us time to confirm that the funds have fully cleared before we send your Bitcoin.

 

What should I expect if I'm using ANZ?

  • Your Bitcoin will be delivered once the funds have cleared, typically within a few hours.

  • This delay applies only to payments from ANZ accounts made via Akahu.

  • There’s no action needed from you. Once we’ve confirmed receipt, your Bitcoin will be sent as normal.

Can I speed this up?

Yes. If:

  • You’re an existing customer,

  • You’ve made successful transactions with LightningPay from your ANZ account before, and

  • We’re confident that your payment won't be reversed due to fraud concerns,

…then we may be able to enable instant processing again for your ANZ account.

Just get in touch with our support team and let us know. We’ll review your account history and can usually enable instant delivery if the trust level is sufficient.

 

Looking Ahead: Open Banking Improvements

We expect this situation to improve significantly over time. Open Banking in New Zealand is still in its early stages, and current support for real-time payment confirmation varies between banks.

ANZ, in particular, has not yet adopted the full capabilities of Open Banking protocols, which limits our ability to reliably confirm when funds have actually cleared.

By the end of 2025, we anticipate full Open Banking support across all major NZ banks, including ANZ. Once real-time, final-settlement confirmation becomes standard, we'll be able to remove this delay and resume instant Bitcoin delivery for all customers, regardless of their bank.

 

Thanks for your understanding. We’re working hard to ensure Bitcoin purchases remain fast and secure, no matter who you bank with.