Have you been scammed?  - We are here to help

This guide explains what to expect from us.

Report a Scam - Tell us quickly

If you think you’ve been scammed, contact us immediately.

We’ll try to get your money back and we’ll also help protect your banking. 

1.  Call us on 0800 695 566 (within New Zealand) or 0064 9980 9000 from overseas 

2. Or email us on service.nz@bankofchina.com 

3. Once you’ve reported the scam to us, report your case to the Police.

Remember, BOCNZ will never

• Ask you for your banking PINs, passwords or security codes
• Send you a link to log on to Internet Banking – always type the URL (https://www.bankofchina.com/nz/en/index.html) into your browser
• Ask you to download any software onto your devices
• Ask you to give us remote access to your devices.
• Use international phone numbers to call or send you notifications

We will make every reasonable effort to recover the funds, and handle compensation accordingly 

What happens next depends on whether:

Someone accessed and used your banking without authority to take money from your accounts — called an ‘unauthorized payment’

You were tricked into paying under a scam — called an ‘authorized payment scam’.

We’ll ask questions to understand what happened, protect your banking, (i.e payment purpose) and work with other banks to help protect people from similar scams. 

Be open and honest, even if you’re embarrassed or think you made a mistake. 

Hiding information or being untruthful may mean we won’t compensate you.

Someone accessed and used your banking 

Under the Code of Banking Practice, we’ll compensate loss from an unauthorised payment if you: 

• weren’t dishonest or negligent, and
• took reasonable steps to protect your banking, and 
• cooperate with our information requests.

What to expect

Once we have all the information, we need to understand what happened, we’ll: 

• assess if you’re eligible
• let you know within 30 business days if we’ll compensate you.

Someone tricked you into paying under a scam

Under the Code of Banking Practice, we’ll compensate all or some loss from an authorised payment scam if:

• you’re eligible, and
• we didn’t meet our scam protection commitments.

How much we compensate depends on whether you took reasonable care.

Eligibility 

You’re eligible if you:

• were a consumer 
• made a domestic payment after 30 November 2025
• weren’t using a third-party payment service
• weren’t buying goods or services on a social media or online marketplace 
• weren’t dishonest or fraudulent
• reported the scam to the New Zealand Police and us within three months of discovery (or within twelve months of the last payment) 
• cooperate with our information requests.
• We’ll only compensate losses three times during our banking relationship. 

What to expect

Once we have all of the information, we’ll let you know within 30 business days if we’ll compensate you. 

We’ll check if you’re eligible — if not, we’ll let you know quickly.

If eligible, we’ll check if we met our commitments.

If we didn’t, we’ll compensate all or some of your loss depending on whether you took reasonable care.

If we did, we’ll ask the bank who received your payment (the receiving bank) if they met their commitment. If they didn’t, they’ll compensate your loss.

We’ll let you know if we’ll only compensate some of your loss because we believe you didn’t take reasonable care when making or deciding to make the payment. For example, you made the payment despite our warnings.

We can share your information

If we met our commitments, we share information with the receiving bank so they can check if they met their commitment and pay you compensation if they didn’t.

What happens if you’re unhappy

If you’re unhappy with our decision, let us know. We’ll work with you to try to find a solution that’s fair and reasonable.

If you’re still unhappy after we’ve tried to resolve things with you, you can ask the Banking Ombudsman Scheme to look at our decision.

Our scam protection commitments 

To help protect New Zealanders from scams the banking community has committed to providing:

Education warnings: We will provide specific education warnings to consumers before certain payments are made.

Confirmation of payee service Confirmation of Payee Service: We will offer a service for some banking channels to check if the name of the person you’re paying matches the account or not, or if we can’t check.

High-risk transaction identification: We will identify high-risk transactions and respond appropriately.

24/7 reporting channel: We will provide a 24/7 reporting channel for customers and respond to reports of a scam within a reasonable timeframe. 

Information sharing: We will share information with other banks to help prevent criminal activity and freeze funds where appropriate.

NZBA - Code of Banking Practice