Why Don't My Transactions Show Up Straight Away?

Quick answer: Your bank decides when a transaction settles, and open banking in New Zealand passes it on at most twice a day. So a coffee bought at 8am can appear that afternoon, or the next morning. Nothing is broken, and no NZ app can do better — the limit is the banking system, not the app.

Kia ora. You tapped your card at the dairy, opened Steady, and nothing. It is the single most common thing people ask us, and the honest answer has two halves.

Why don't my transactions show up straight away?

Two separate delays stack up. First your bank has to settle the payment, which can take from a few hours to three days. Then the open banking system has to hand that settled transaction to Steady, and it does that at most twice a day.

Neither delay is Steady's. Both are the plumbing underneath every budgeting app in the country.

What's the difference between pending and posted?

A pending transaction is one your bank has seen but not finished processing. The money is earmarked and your available balance has dropped, but the payment has not settled.

A posted transaction is finished. The amount is final, the merchant name is usually tidier, and it will not change again.

Pending amounts move. A petrol station may hold $1 when you tap and post the real $85 two days later. A restaurant may hold the bill and post it with a tip added. This is why a budget built only on pending data drifts.

How often does Steady actually update?

At most twice a day. That is the schedule New Zealand's open banking system runs on, confirmed by Akahu, the accredited requestor Steady connects through.

There is no faster path available to any app here, and none on the roadmap. Anyone promising you something quicker is describing a system New Zealand does not have.

Pending transactions arrive on that same schedule. They are not a separate, faster channel.

Can I force a refresh?

Opening Steady triggers a check, so the newest data the system holds is pulled in when you sign in. What that cannot do is make your bank settle a payment sooner, or make the open banking system release data it has not collected yet.

So a manual refresh helps when you have been away for a day. It does nothing at all thirty seconds after you tap your card.

Why does my bank app show a different balance?

Because the two are answering different questions at different moments.

Your bank app reads its own ledger directly and knows about a payment the second it is authorised. Steady reads what open banking has passed on, which is up to half a day behind.

There is a second reason, and it matters more. Your bank shows the balance. Steady shows what is left after the bills that have not come out yet — see what Safe to Spend actually means. Those two numbers are meant to differ.

Does this make a budgeting app useless?

It would, if the job were telling you what you spent in the last hour. You already know that. You were there.

The job worth doing is the one your memory is bad at: what is still to come out before payday, and whether what is left covers it. That question is about bills you have already agreed to and pay that already has a date. A few hours of lag changes none of it.

Steady is built around that. Safe to Spend counts forward from committed bills rather than backward from this morning's coffee, so it is right whether or not the coffee has landed yet.

What about my investments?

Investment platforms connect for balances only. Sharesies, Kernel, InvestNow and the rest hand over what your holdings are worth, and no transaction history at all.

So you will see the value move and never see the individual buys. That is a limit of what those platforms expose, not a setting to turn on.

The short version

• Your bank settles a payment in hours to days. Open banking passes it on at most twice a day.
• Pending amounts change. Posted amounts do not.
• Your bank's balance and Steady's Safe to Spend are different numbers on purpose.
• No NZ app updates faster, because the limit is the banking system.

If something still looks wrong after a full day, that is worth reporting — a transaction missing after 24 hours is a different problem from one missing after 24 minutes.