New Zealand Currency
And Exchange Rates
Show Me The Money!New Zealand currency is pretty recent as far as money goes. The currency is simple and familiar in name. Dollars and Cents: New Zealand dollars and cents, 100 cents to One NZ dollar. There is no other currency available or used. There! Told you it was simple! Here are the current denominations for notes and coins:
Notes - $5, $10, $20, $50 and $100 Coins - 10, 20 and 50 cents and $1 and $2.And to help you figure out your exchange rate for the NZ dollar we’ve got a exchange rate widget for you to fiddle about with. The default currencies are in the search bars already. Just change the currency and Voila!
Choose your currency and the rate will be shown immediately below. Use the arrow button to toggle between the currencies you've chosen. That's all there is to it!
New Zealand Currency Back StoryBefore the first Europeans arrived in Aotearoa there was no cash. Once the European sailors had settled into the beginnings of a life on the islands there was much bartering with the Maori. Nails for breadfruit, cloth for greenstone it was all on the market for trading purposes. A situation every New Zealand tourist yearns for I’m sure!
The problem with barter is that much depends on the skill of individual bargainers. So Europeans started to use coins. Most of the coins were British which is fairly obvious but there were very few banknotes around. This was frontier country; there were no handy stores to spend your bank notes in. There wasn’t an economy. It was all just beginning.
Coins are of course durable which was an advantage with travel in New Zealand so tough at times. With the establishing of a formal government by William Hobson and the New Zealand Company financing the building and establishment of major settlements from New Plymouth to Wanganui, Wellington to the Hutt Valley and Nelson to Marlborough: New Zealand currency was very much on the agenda.
The colony grew quickly after 1840. With all this growth and economic fervour seizing everyone it wasn’t long before coins were in short supply. Individual traders began to issue low value paper money by way of compensating for the shortage.Traders in Auckland and Dunedin began issuing copper tokens in light of the shortage. Cheap to produce a surprising number of traders got in on the act, issuing penny and halfpenny coins with their business and wares promoted on the coins faces. This practice carried on into the late 1880s with a Christchurch business issuing the last ones in 1881.
By this time both British coins and Australian sovereign and half-sovereigns were starting to circulate as "legal" tender in New Zealand. This coincided with a change from the rugged colony of the mid 1800s to a sleeker more established state. With politicians finally getting their sleeves rolled up and jumping in, you had the formation of government, strengthening of economic ties and thus legitimacy to New Zealand currency and trade.
After 1897 British coin became the only legal tender in New Zealand. It was 1924 before there was any uniformity in note and coin design. The main trading banks were not obliged to accept notes issued from a competitor though most did. Finally it was all about New Zealand, the unifying of scattered communities and export of goods from this land of the long white cloud. It was about a New Zealand exchange rate on the world stage. So that’s your New Zealand currency all bundled up!
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