Money matters in NZ
 

Hi,
We are going to NZ in December and we are wondering whether we should take travellers cheques or not... When we go to the USA we always do as we know we can just use them as cash to pay purchases. We don't think it is the same in NZ though... What should we take? We will of course have our credit cards but how should we go about getting cash? If we take travellers cheques should we take some in NZ dollars? will we be able to exchange them in Holiday parks or will we have to go to a bank? Would it then be easier to use ATMs? Thanks for any advice you can give us!

You're probably best off using an ATM card. We're in NZ right now, and we're using travellers checks in US funds, but they're a bit of a pain as you have to go to a bank or airport to cash them.

Many banks and charged a fee to cash the travelers checks and a number of businesses did NOT really want to deal with them. We used our ATM card and turned the travelers checks back to the bank when we returned to the states. We did have more than one credit card with us in case of emergencies.

My recommendation is to take two credit cards to use in ATMs and some NZ cash for use on your immediate arrival. If you do take travellers cheques, take them in NZ currency.

Before ATM's, travellers cheques were accepted at most tourist outlets but now it is best to use either credit or debit cards. There are thousands of ATM's, I believe we were one of the first and used rather as an experiment in the beginning, plus nearly all outlets have EFTPOS.
So I would recommend two debit and two credit cards, two obviously as a back up and some cash to start off with, perhaps no more than $200NZ.
I took American Express travellers cheques to Europe last year and quite frankly they were a nuisance and I wouldn't bother again. I had to find the Amex offices to cash them otherwise the fees were quite high. You could even wait until you reach here and use the ATM at the arrivals hall at the airport to get your first lot of cash.
Make sure the cards are new as one of mine refused to work and I hadn't noticed it was becoming a bit worn.

Returned from 3 weeks in NZ last Friday. Upon arrival, I got 300$NZ from an ATM at the Aukland airport. We used credit cards at all places possible and are not "embarassed" to use them for very small amounts. Credit cards are accepted in almost all places, large and small. We still had 50$NZ at the end of the trip. American Express is readily accepted almost everywhere, along with VISA and MC. In the few places where AEX was not accepted, VISA and MC were. ATMs are also available in most places -- large and small -- as is readily available access to the internet.