Every October, tens of thousands of visitors from China arrive in New Zealand for Golden Week. They walk into cafés, gift shops, and tour offices, and when it comes time to pay they reach for their phones. If your EFTPOS setup takes payment the way they expect, you make the sale. If it cannot, they move on to the next shop that can.
Around 60% of Chinese visitors arrive outside our peak summer season. Golden Week runs from 1 to 7 October, one of the two biggest holiday weeks in China and one of the busiest for outbound travel. It lands in early spring here, which is part of the appeal. While much of the northern hemisphere heads into winter, New Zealand offers the opposite season, and Chinese travellers have long treated it as a fresh-air, country escape
What sets Chinese travellers apart from others is a higher-than-average spend per person. In the year to March 2026, Chinese visitors spent somewhere between NZ$1.0 and 1.3 billion, according to New Zealand's International Visitor Survey. Each Chinese visitor spends in the region of NZ$4,000 to 5,000 a trip. For comparison, our biggest inbound visitor market is Australia, but the average Australian spends only around NZ$2,200 a trip.
Many Chinese travellers do not carry a Visa or Mastercard. They pay with the mobile wallets they use every day at home, mainly Alipay and WeChat Pay, and they will look for those logos before they decide where to spend. Kristy Gregory, Head of Merchant Sales and Strategic Partners at Eftpos NZ, says the gap is often a surprise to business owners. "Chinese travellers are some of the highest-spending visitors we get, and they pay the way they do back home," she says. "If you can accept Alipay and WeChat Pay, you are meeting them where they already are. If you cannot, you are quietly turning that spend away."
The good news is that if you already have a Verifone Android EFTPOS device, it's quick and easy to get set up to accept these payment methods.
Geography plays a part. Around 88% of Chinese holidaymakers arrive in the North Island, with Auckland as the main gateway. The South Island draws a smaller share, but a high-value one, concentrated around Queenstown and Christchurch. In late September 2023, some Queenstown operators reported that around 60% of their bookings were Chinese customers.
If you run a business in a tourist centre, an airport precinct, or a main-street retail strip, Golden Week is one to plan for.
The good news is that preparation for a boost in Chinese payments is straightforward:
If you accept Alipay+ and WeChat Pay, the logos will display in your terminal's present card screen. If they don't display, get in touch with us here.
Ready to turn Chinese visitors into paying customers?
Our free guide with PayPlus shows you how to attract mobile-first shoppers, reduce friction at checkout,
and convert more sales, all on the Verifone EFTPOS terminal you already have.