Every second app now offers you money for bringing a friend, and almost none of them tell you the part that decides whether the offer is worth anything: how likely that friend is to move at all. In a country of five million people where two supermarket groups hold more than 80 percent of the grocery market, the difference between a referral programme that pays and one that never triggers is not the headline amount. It is the market you are pointing people at. Alongside the referral income covered here, an app like I am Beezy pays for the time you already spend looking at videos, articles and ads, which is a different kind of income with a different rhythm.
What an introduction is really worth in a market this size
A referral programme is a bet with two variables: what the company pays when someone signs up, and how many of the people you talk to were ever going to sign up. New Zealanders are not evenly willing to switch. The Commerce Commission measures this and publishes it, which means you can size the second variable before you spend a single evening promoting anything.
The advertised payout is the smaller half of the equation
Take two programmes, one paying twice what the other pays. If the generous one operates in a market where roughly seven people in a hundred change supplier in a year, and the modest one operates where nineteen in a hundred do, the modest one wins on volume before you have said a word to anybody. The published switching rate is the closest thing you have to a conversion forecast, and it costs nothing to look up.
Where the customer is genuinely contestable
Contestable means the person you introduce can leave their current supplier without a penalty, without losing service, and without a month of paperwork. The Electricity Authority says a change of electricity retailer takes just three to four days. A supermarket shopper, by contrast, has nowhere new to go in most of the country. Same country, same population, completely different odds on the same kind of introduction.
Which New Zealand sectors actually pay for an introduction?
Four consumer markets carry most of the referral offers you will see locally: power, broadband, mobile and groceries. The regulator data on each of them is public, and it points in one direction.
Electricity, the one market where people really do move
About 19 percent of electricity customers changed retailer in the year to 30 June 2025, against 11 percent for fixed internet and 7 percent for mobile. The Electricity Authority publishes the market share of every retailer month by month on its EMI portal: Mercury at 25.16 percent of connection points, Genesis Energy at 21.96, Contact Energy at 20.13 and Meridian Energy at 19.49 at 30 June 2026, ahead of independents such as Nova Energy at 3.53, Pulse Energy Alliance at 3.39 and Electric Kiwi at 2.93. A retailer whose share is climbing month after month is a retailer buying customers, and that is the one whose referral terms are worth reading.
Telecommunications, where the rational choice is not the common one
The Commerce Commission found that mobile virtual operators were on average 5 percent cheaper on monthly plans, 36 percent cheaper on prepaid and around 27 percent cheaper on high-data and unlimited plans at June 2025 — and that they still held only 3.2 percent of the market, 221,000 connections, up 28 percent in a year. Only 7 percent of mobile customers changed provider over the same period. That gap between the sensible move and the actual move is the whole opportunity for anyone explaining the options to friends and family.
Groceries, where there is nothing to introduce anyone to
The Grocery Commissioner reports that the major grocery retailers hold over 80 percent of the national retail market, with little observable change in core competition metrics over the year. Ninety percent of New Zealanders live within ten minutes' drive of a store, but only 79 percent have a choice between the two groups inside that radius. There is no meaningful referral economy here, and any offer that appears in this space is a loyalty scheme wearing a referral costume.
| Sector | Customers who changed provider, year to 30 June 2025 | What the regulator publishes | What it means for you |
|---|---|---|---|
| Electricity | About 19% | Named market share of every retailer, updated monthly (Electricity Authority, EMI) | Best odds, and you can see who is buying growth |
| Fixed internet | About 11% | National and urban shares, plus prices actually paid by region | Good odds, strongest case in rural areas |
| Mobile | About 7% | Concentration ratios and the MVNO share, not individual network shares | Low odds, high savings argument |
| Supermarkets | Not published | Over 80% of the national market held by the major retailers | No real switching market |
Reading a referral programme's terms before you send anyone
Programmes are written by the company paying them, and the interesting clauses are never in the banner. Four of them decide whether you are paid at all.
The qualifying event, the clawback and the expiry
Ask what triggers the payment: a sign-up, a first bill paid, or ninety days of service. Ask whether the payment is reversed if the person leaves inside a set period, because a friend who switches power in March and moves house in May can undo your commission. Ask when your referral link stops counting. These three answers change the value of the same headline figure by a factor of several.
Account credit is not the same as being paid
Many New Zealand referral offers pay in credit on your own bill rather than in cash. Credit is worth its face value only if you were going to spend that much with the company anyway, and only if it does not expire. A bill credit locks you into the supplier you were about to compare against everyone else. If you would not have chosen that supplier for yourself at full price, the credit has quietly bought your loyalty at a discount.
The rural argument that only works here
The Commerce Commission measures the price households actually pay for fixed internet, region by region and urban against rural: 71.74 dollars a month in urban Auckland against 96.06 in rural Taranaki, an urban-rural gap running from 11 to 27 percent depending on the region. Rural households pay on average 13 dollars a month more than urban ones, and Starlink has become the country's largest rural provider with 27 percent of rural connections. If you live outside a town, you are talking to people with an unusually strong reason to move.
The bundle question you have to raise yourself
Power companies here also sell broadband and mobile, and the combined offer is where most referral money now sits: 335,000 households were on a bundled internet and electricity plan in 2025, up 13 percent in a year and up 200,000 over five years. The Commerce Commission's own warning is worth repeating to anyone you introduce, because savings on telecommunications services are in some cases offset by higher energy prices. If you send a friend into a bundle and their power bill quietly absorbs the broadband discount, they will remember who recommended it. Ask them to price the two lines separately first, then compare the bundle against that total rather than against their current bill.
What does Inland Revenue take from a commission?
This is where New Zealand differs from most of the countries our readers compare themselves with, and the difference is not in your favour.
There is no tax-free threshold
New Zealand taxes income from the first dollar. Inland Revenue's rates for individuals, in force since 1 April 2025, start at 10.5 percent from zero to 15,600 dollars, then 17.5 percent to 53,500, 30 percent to 78,100, 33 percent to 180,000 and 39 percent above that. There is no starting band at zero percent and no allowance to shelter a small commission. Anyone who tells you a first year of side income is untaxed is describing another country.
The 60,000 dollar line and the 1 April year
GST registration becomes compulsory once your taxable turnover reaches 60,000 dollars in the last twelve months, or once you expect it to reach that in the next twelve — the test runs both backwards and forwards. Below that you may register voluntarily, and you must register whatever your turnover if you add GST to your prices. GST here is 15 percent, not the 10 percent that applies across the Tasman. Remember too that the tax year runs 1 April to 31 March, so a commission paid on 2 April belongs to a different year from one paid on 30 March.
| Your situation | What applies | Official source |
|---|---|---|
| First dollar of commission received | Taxable at 10.5% up to $15,600 of total income, rising in bands to 39% above $180,000 (rates since 1 April 2025) | Inland Revenue, tax rates for individuals |
| Turnover reaches $60,000 over twelve months, past or expected | GST registration compulsory | Inland Revenue, registering for GST |
| Turnover below $60,000 | Voluntary GST registration allowed | Inland Revenue, registering for GST |
| You add GST to your prices | Registration compulsory regardless of turnover | Inland Revenue, registering for GST |
| You want to be paid at all | An IRD number is required to receive income | Inland Revenue, IRD numbers |
Filling the gaps between commissions with I am Beezy
Referral income is lumpy by nature: nothing for three weeks, then two payments in a day. I am Beezy sits in the other half of that pattern — you look at videos, articles and advertising in the app, each view earns, and the balance goes out to the payment method you already use, so there is no new account to open and no one to convince.
What the range looks like in New Zealand dollars
Across the platform, users earn in the order of 5 to 15 euros a day. At the European Central Bank reference rate of 1.9680 New Zealand dollars to the euro on 5 August 2026, that is roughly 9.80 to 29.50 New Zealand dollars a day — check the rate on the day, because it moves, and remember that this income is taxable from the first dollar like any other.
Three moves before you promote anything
You now have enough to sort the offers in your inbox without guessing.
The one-page test
Write down, for each programme: the switching rate of its sector, the qualifying event, whether payment is cash or credit, and the clawback window. Any programme that fails two of those four is not worth an evening. Then check the EMI market share page to see which power retailers are actually growing, read the terms of the two that are, and start there. If you also want an income that does not depend on anyone else saying yes, I am Beezy pays for views you make yourself, which makes it a useful floor under a referral plan that is, by definition, out of your hands.
