New Zealand plans to scrap card payment surcharges
The plan follows the decision last year by New Zealand's Commerce Commission to lower fees that local businesses pay to accept Visa and Mastercard payments.
"We are scrapping surcharges at the till. New Zealanders are paying up to NZ$150 million in surcharges every year. That's money that could be saved or spent elsewhere," Prime Minister Christopher Luxon told reporters.
"You no longer will be penalised for your choice of payment method, whether that's tapping, swiping, or using your phone's digital wallet."
Visa and Mastercard both welcomed the decision.
Banning surcharges was "a welcome win for transparency and fairness at the checkout for consumers and reflects Visa's long-held view on surcharging globally," Anthony Watson, country manager for New Zealand and South Pacific, said.
A spokesperson for Mastercard said the ban aligns New Zealand "with other leading economies at a time when payment acceptance costs have never been lower".
The proposed ban will not include online payments or transactions made using foreign-issued cards, prepaid, travel and gift cards.
New Zealand's Commerce Commission estimates consumers pay about NZ$150 million in surcharges annually, including up to NZ$65 million in excessive surcharges.
"Surcharges cover the fees businesses pay for accepting contactless payments and credit cards, but we know these are often excessive. In some cases, the retailer doesn't even make it clear what the percentage is," Commerce Minister Scott Simpson said in a statement.
The government plans to introduce the bill to ban most card surcharges by the end of this year.
Shops in New Zealand typically charge consumers around 0.7 per cent for debit card payments and up to 2 per cent for credit card payments, according to New Zealand's Commerce Commission.
Australia's central bank this month proposed to scrap surcharges on most debit and credit card payments for consumers, saying it no longer achieved the intended purpose of steering consumers to make more efficient payment choices.
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The Star
2 minutes ago
- The Star
Will China win the renewables race while US pivots to fossil fuels and nuclear?
US President Donald Trump's signature budget bill, signed into law earlier this month, marked a startling pivot towards fossil fuels and nuclear power, reigniting a fierce debate over how best to balance the country's energy future with its national security. The act, known officially as the One Big Beautiful Bill, rolls back Joe Biden era subsidies for solar, wind and electric vehicles – a dramatic reversal of long-standing US support for clean energy in a world racing towards decarbonisation. At the same time, the act preserves subsidies for nuclear projects, particularly fusion, which is framed as a dependable, low-carbon energy source and a long-term strategy to lessen US reliance on rare earths. Washington has described the energy overhaul as a strategic imperative rooted in national security concerns – especially after Beijing leveraged its near-monopoly over rare earths in the renewed US-China trade war. The legislation's supporters say it is a bold attempt to secure energy independence, arguing that the US must close technological gaps and mitigate supply chain vulnerabilities that could hand additional strategic leverage to Beijing. In this view, China's clean tech manufacturing dominance and control over critical minerals – essential to renewable technologies from solar panels and wind turbines to EV batteries – have left the US exposed to supply disruptions and geopolitical manipulation. Critics argue that the act prioritises short-term security and economic gains over long-term sustainability and global competitiveness – potentially ceding US leadership in the clean energy transition and threatening the planet's climate future. They also warn that the rollback of clean energy measures established by the Biden administration's 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) represents a high-stakes gamble based on a strategic miscalculation. In an illustration of the intensifying competition, just days after Trump's bill became law, Beijing unveiled a state-owned behemoth with a registered capital of 15 billion yuan (US$2.1 billion) and a target to achieve commercialisation of nuclear fusion by 2050. Last week's launch of China Fusion Energy Co Ltd signalled Beijing's ambition to lead in next-generation energy technologies, with thermonuclear power widely regarded as an ultimate energy solution. The Shanghai-based fusion company is backed by a coalition of seven state-owned giants across the nuclear and petroleum sectors, including China National Nuclear Corporation, PetroChina's Kunlun Capital, and the Shanghai Future Industry Fund. Also last week, China and the European Union issued a joint statement reaffirming their commitment to shared climate leadership and underscoring the urgency of global cooperation in the wake of the US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement – for the second time under Trump – earlier this year. And at the Brics summit earlier this month, China joined the major developing nations – including India, Brazil and South Africa – in a pledge to 'intensify global efforts to contain global warming'. According to Li Shuo, director of the Asia Society Policy Institute's China Climate Hub, the legislative changes showed that the green industrial strategy previously pursued by the US had become 'politically unsustainable' in today's Washington. 'The rollback of subsidies for clean tech manufacturing and deployment will reduce domestic supply of these products and in turn dampen demand. This will slow down clean tech development in the US and underscores the challenges ahead for US decarbonisation,' he said. 'In recent years, Washington has opted not to rely on Chinese technologies yet. With what happened to the IRA, it will continue to struggle to develop viable alternatives.' Scott Moore, director of China Programmes and Strategic Initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania, said it was 'pretty clear' that Trump's goal of cutting US dependence on China in critical minerals and other areas aligned with his predecessor's approach. 'That objective has been present for some time,' he said, adding that the second Trump administration had been 'even more forward-leaning' and assertive on that front. According to Moore, 'one of the most telling examples' that the Trump White House particularly prioritises reducing US dependence on rare earths is the MP Materials deal announced earlier this month. Under the multibillion-dollar partnership deal, Washington has acquired a 15 per cent stake in the company, which owns the only operational rare earths mine in the US, Mountain Pass in California, supplying roughly 15 per cent of global rare earth elements. 'There are alternatives, but it's difficult to replicate the entire supply chain – especially the processing [that] involves highly toxic materials, which makes it challenging to get local approvals and overcome community opposition. But it's still possible,' Moore said. While the US could still narrow the gap with China on rare earths and clean energy, success would ultimately depend on cost, he suggested. Anders Hove, a senior research fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, also highlighted the challenge of processing toxic rare earth materials as posing a critical gap in the US supply chain. Hove said the legislation's fossil fuel emphasis reflected deep political divides and ideological differences in the US that could be traced back to the oil shocks of the mid-1970s. 'Since the 1970s, the two parties have grown more polarised in their positions on almost every issue,' he said. 'But starting in the 2000s, the Republican Party began to oppose any action on climate change, and renewable energy began to lose its bipartisan character. At the same time, supporting coal became a symbol of the culture war, more than [something] substantive or strategic.' Hove – whose public and private sector experience in energy policy and markets includes 12 years in China and nine on Wall Street – noted that the US under Trump and Biden, as well as Europe, each had distinct strategies to reduce their reliance on foreign sources. 'The Biden approach was more similar to Europe's, in the sense of working with trading partners like Canada or Chile to diversify critical minerals supply – including processing,' he said. Sun Haiyong, a researcher at the American Studies Centre of the Shanghai Institutes for International Studies, observed that fossil fuel interests were a core base for the Republican Party, which often downplayed climate mitigation in favour of economic and political priorities. 'The current US shift towards fossil fuels is driven mostly by the interest groups behind the Trump administration,' he said, adding that the lack of competitiveness in clean energy equipment manufacturing was also contributing to its retreat from renewables. 'Most production capacity for wind and solar technologies, energy storage systems and other related equipment is concentrated in China, which also holds technological and production advantages in processing and raw material extraction – particularly for critical minerals needed in energy transition technologies like wind turbines and energy storage.' Sun noted that there were also 'short-term economic benefits' for the Trump administration in ramping up fossil fuel production and exports – including greater economic leverage over Europe and support for the increasingly unstable US dollar. Meanwhile, China is projected to contribute 60 per cent of the world's expansion in renewable energy capacity by 2030, according to the International Energy Agency. The country produced roughly half of global solar capacity in 2023, while accounting for more than 60 per cent of global EV production. Tom Moerenhout, head of the Critical Materials Initiative at Columbia University's Centre on Global Energy Policy, said the US' entrenched status as a major producer, consumer, and exporter of fossil fuels was a driving force behind the sweeping policy shift. 'There's a refocus on those sectors,' he said, referring to renewed investment in natural gas power plants and internal combustion engine vehicles – developments shaped by both market forces and political priorities. 'The US is the world's biggest producer of both oil and gas – they get enormous revenue from that. They have deep market knowledge and strong technological expertise in fossil fuels,' Moerenhout said. 'It would make no sense for the US to suddenly abandon fossil fuels from an industrial or know-how perspective,' he noted, acknowledging that they yielded 'far more immediate cash than renewables'. Nevertheless, the refocus on fossil fuels is 'pure short-termism', according to Moerenhout, who described the legislation as a serious setback for US clean energy ambitions, with Washington widely perceived internationally as 'throwing in the towel' on renewables. 'I don't think [pulling back from clean energy] is necessarily wrong. It's just that the US is not going to compete globally,' he said. 'It's a very immature and problematic industrial policy if your goal is to be a player in tomorrow's world rather than someone left behind.' The new legislation is also designed to insulate the US economy by disqualifying products made with Chinese components or resources from federal subsidies – a move that has prompted several critical questions. Li, from the Asia Society Policy Institute, noted that with the scrapping of the IRA and the new legislation's rules limiting access to Chinese green technologies, the US cleantech landscape faced constraints on two fronts. '[The US] refuses to import Chinese clean technologies – as per Biden's original stance – and, with Trump's repeal of the IRA, it has also surrendered much of its domestic manufacturing capacity,' he said. 'This combination sets the stage for major setbacks in decarbonisation efforts over the medium to long term [and] marks a critical inflection point – not just for US-China climate dynamics, but for the global climate agenda as a whole.' 'The US is simply stepping off the field,' according to Li, who predicted that US-China climate relations would become increasingly asymmetrical. 'The US is retreating both politically and economically from climate action while China is gradually realising that decarbonisation serves its commercial interests,' he said. 'The long-standing global climate storyline, in which developed countries push developing ones to accelerate action, may well be rewritten in reverse. And we are only at the beginning of this shift.' The long-standing global climate storyline, in which developed countries push developing ones to accelerate action, may well be rewritten in reverse In Shanghai, Sun raised similar doubts about the long-term viability of Washington's pivot to fossil fuels, which he said 'cannot serve as a long-term energy solution for the US'. He said this was mainly because of the growing environmental impacts of fracking, the urgent need to address climate change, and the inevitable policy shifts driven by changes in political leadership. 'As for nuclear fusion, while the technology pathway is viable, its commercialisation is still a long way off,' he said, adding that construction of new nuclear power projects or the restart of previously halted ones in the US had long been plagued by delays, cost overruns and cancellations. Sun also cautioned against overstating the importance of the new legislation, pointing out that there were 'significant hurdles in advancing re-industrialisation'. The Oxford Institute's Hove shared this view, adding that nuclear power tended to get more expensive over time, while renewable energy was more likely to benefit from rapid learning and cost declines. 'Fusion plant [technology] is decades from being demonstrated at scale – presumably funded by the government – and commercialisation decades beyond that, if it even has any economic viability, which right now is a huge unknown,' he said. Hove also highlighted the impact of trade disputes on securing critical supplies from abroad, adding that slowing demand for wind and electric vehicles in the US was weakening incentives for companies to invest in long-term supply chains or upstream innovation. Moore, from the University of Pennsylvania, questioned whether fossil fuels should remain a long-term option, even if they could. He also predicted that wind and solar would likely remain central to the energy mix. In contrast, fusion, due to capital intensive and its dependency on specialised infrastructure, would probably remain a centralised power source, he said. Columbia University's Moerenhout rejected the notion that fossil fuels were simply a place holder until nuclear fusion became viable, noting that the technology remained a distant, expensive gamble that was often hyped by those with vested interests. 'It's not illogical to think fusion may eventually produce electricity commercially – but that day isn't coming in the next decade,' said Moerenhout, who described the legislation as a 'mixed bag'. In his view, small modular reactors are 'much closer to economic competitiveness than fusion', though they would still need real-world deployment to prove their viability. And while fusion and small modular reactors may hold long-term promise, meaningful cost reductions were already happening in proven technologies such as renewables and smart grid technologies, Moerenhout said. 'If you want to see where the biggest cost reductions for reliable electricity are happening, it's in clean energy [like] wind, solar, in demand-side management, smart meters, and so forth ... There the cost reductions are real. They're clear. They're visible. They're already happening.' - SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
The Sun
2 minutes ago
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Asia factory activity slump deepens
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The Sun
2 minutes ago
- The Sun
US tariff cut boosts Malaysia's trade competitiveness with improved relations
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