Immigration New Zealand says an increasing number of companies with no connection to it or the New Zealand Government are operating under potentially misleading names and charging visitors up to 10 times the official price to request a New Zealand Electronic Travel Authority (NZeTA).

NZeTAs are required by travellers to New Zealand from visa waiver countries. They became mandatory on 1 October 2019 for visitors from around 60 visa waiver countries and 24 transit visa waiver countries. More than 280,000 NZeTAs have already been processed by INZ and 106 requests have been refused.

“We are seeing a growing number of third parties charging visitors for something they can very quickly and easily do themselves and that’s concerning,” INZ General Manager Stephen Dunstan says.

“An NZeTA costs just NZD$12 using the website or NZD$9 using the mobile apps and only takes a matter of minutes to complete. Travellers shouldn’t need to fork out more money than the official cost and should make sure that they aren’t being misled into paying more."

Mr Dunstan says some third parties are also claiming to be able to provide an expedited service.

"However, an expedited service is not available and third parties are only able to submit the traveller’s information to INZ using the same web form or mobile app travellers can use themselves.

“In some cases, these third parties are also collecting additional information from travellers, which isn’t actually required as part of the NZeTA request.”