BNZ and Kiwibank have joined the ranks of New Zealand banks dropping Mastercard. BNZ has written to a first tranche of Advantage Classic Mastercard customers giving them six weeks' notice that their Mastercard credit cards will stop working on March 12 (even if ahead of expiry dates) and will be replaced with a Visa card. Late last month Kiwibank also announced it was ditching Mastercard and would be replacing existing cards with Visa cards. ASB did the same in 2014. A BNZ spokesman said Visa was compatible with ApplePay and Google Pay and the bank (which reportedly only stopped  issuing new Mastercards on November 20) also believed Visa had better security features "and simpler processes for customers wanting a new card".