The five criteria
Every platform score out of five is built from these, weighted as shown. The weightings reflect what actually costs New Zealanders money, which is not the same as what international comparison sites tend to emphasise.
| Criterion | Weight | What we look at |
|---|---|---|
| NZD capability | 30% | Whether New Zealand dollars can move in and out of a New Zealand bank account without a peer-to-peer detour or a currency conversion. |
| Total cost | 25% | The full round trip: deposit fee, spread, trading fee, withdrawal fee and any foreign exchange — not the headline rate. |
| Registration and oversight | 20% | FSPR registration, dispute resolution scheme membership, and any verifiable licence or authorisation in a jurisdiction that issues them. |
| Security posture | 15% | Independent certifications such as ISO 27001 or SOC 2, two-factor options, withdrawal whitelisting, and incident history. |
| Usability and records | 10% | Whether a first-time user can complete the loop, and whether a complete transaction export exists for tax. |
Why NZD capability carries the most weight
Because it is the factor that most often turns a good decision into an expensive one, and it is almost never covered in international rankings. Coinbase does not offer New Zealand dollar pairs or withdrawals. Kraken has no NZD market. Binance has no domestic bank rail. A New Zealander who chooses on trading fee alone can find themselves selling to a stranger on a peer-to-peer board to get their own money back.
What we can verify
- Registration status on the Financial Service Providers Register and dispute resolution scheme membership.
- Published fee schedules, deposit and withdrawal terms, and stated supported currencies.
- Publicly claimed certifications and licences, checked against the issuing body where possible.
- Regulatory actions, warnings and enforcement recorded by the FMA, DIA, Commerce Commission or Serious Fraud Office.
- Corporate events — acquisitions, closures, ownership changes — reported by credible outlets or company announcements.
What we cannot verify, and will not pretend to
Solvency. Reserve backing. Internal controls. Whether customer assets are segregated in practice rather than in a terms document. Whether a company is about to lose its banking. No publicly available document would let us assess any of those for any platform serving this market, and claiming otherwise would be dishonest.
This is not a hypothetical limitation. Dasset was operating normally right up until customers could not withdraw, and the first liquidator report later identified roughly NZ$6.3 million of customer cryptoassets unaccounted for. No amount of external analysis would have surfaced that beforehand. It is the reason every page on this site ends up recommending self-custody for long-term holdings.
What a rating means
A score reflects how well a platform serves a New Zealand user against the five criteria above, at the review date. It is not an assessment of financial stability, a prediction about the future, or a recommendation to use the platform. It is a comparison, nothing more.
Sourcing
Regulatory material comes from primary sources: the Financial Markets Authority, the Department of Internal Affairs, Inland Revenue, the Serious Fraud Office, the Financial Service Providers Register and ministerial releases on Beehive.govt.nz. Platform figures come from operators' own published schedules. Corporate events come from company announcements and credible New Zealand business media.
Where sources conflict, we say so. Where a figure cannot be confirmed, we say that too rather than picking the more convenient number. Several widely repeated claims about this market are wrong precisely because outlets reported an in-principle decision as a final one.
Independence
Some outbound links may earn a commission. That funding does not determine rankings, ordering or the content of any review, and criticism is published regardless of any relationship. The disclosure appears in the footer of every page and in our editorial policy.
No platform has ever been offered a rating in exchange for anything, and any such approach would be declined and disclosed.
Updates and corrections
Every page carries a review date. We update when something material changes rather than on a calendar. Crypto platforms change terms frequently, so treat any figure more than a few months old as worth re-checking against the operator's own site — and tell us if it has moved.