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New Casinos NZ · financialdoctors.co.nz
About · our reviewer team

Who we are and how we work

New Casinos NZ is an independent Kiwi reviewer publication. We test new online casinos with real New Zealand dollars, rate them against responsible-gambling standards, and publish the findings along with the methodology notes so readers can judge our judgement.

Our editorial principle in one sentence

A new casino review is worth reading only if it would still be true when the bonus has been clawed back.

Every site we rank has been tested with our own money from real NZ bank accounts. We pay for the bonuses, we wait for the withdrawals, and we write the review after we have been paid or refused. We do not accept press trips, comped accounts, or editorial “suggestions” from affiliate managers.

We earn revenue when a reader follows one of our links and signs up with a casino. That relationship does not determine the rating — and, where a brand pays commission while also failing our tests, we publish the negative review and decline the link. Three sites are on that list as of April 2026. We do not name them here because the owners would contest the note, but we will happily send the list on request.

Meet the team

Eleanor Whitcombe

Lead Reviewer & Editor

Eleven years covering online gambling for New Zealand and Australian outlets, with a background in financial-journalism research before crossing into the category. Leads the bonus-term analysis and wagering maths. Sets the quarterly review schedule and signs off every ranking change.

Eleanor oversees the KYC friction index, the payout-time stopwatch, and the licence-risk flagging. When a casino argues with a review, she is the one who writes back.

“If a welcome offer needs a spreadsheet to understand, it needs rewriting.”

Teuila Fa'agata

Responsible Gambling Lead

Joined as harm-reduction editor in 2024 after four years at the Gambling Helpline NZ as a caseworker. Reviews every piece of content before publication for framing, language, and presentation of limits and self-exclusion tools. Writes our budget-setting guidance and the responsible-gambling notes in every casino review.

Teuila is a registered member of Clinical Psychology Aotearoa and trains our reviewers on player-harm indicators.

“A good review tells a reader when to walk away, not just when to sign up.”

Henare Tamihana

Payments & POLi Specialist

Former payments analyst for a mid-sized NZ fintech. Tracks the practical realities of depositing and withdrawing at online casinos from New Zealand bank accounts — POLi behaviour, card-rail interventions, crypto processor changes. Runs live deposit-and-withdrawal tests from ANZ, ASB, BNZ, Westpac and Kiwibank.

Henare’s timing spreadsheet is the source for every payout number on the homepage.

“The only honest payout time is the one you’ve actually measured.”

How we make money

When a reader clicks a casino link and signs up, the operator pays a commission or a flat fee. That revenue funds the testing — the deposits we make and do not always recoup, the software tools we use to verify licensing, the hours spent on the payout stopwatch.

We declare the relationship on every review with the rel="sponsored" attribute on every outbound link. Google treats those as affiliate links for ranking purposes; we treat them as how we keep the lights on. Neither of those facts changes the content of the review.

If you would like to know which casinos currently pay commission and which do not, email Eleanor and we will share the list.

What we will not do

  • We will not review a casino we have not deposited at. No exceptions.
  • We will not accept “curated” content or editorial suggestions from an affiliate manager.
  • We will not run paid placements disguised as rankings — the rank order is set by the test results, not the commission.
  • We will not publish a ranking that Teuila has not reviewed for responsible-gambling language.
  • We will not promote casinos that restrict NZ deposit limits or make self-exclusion harder to find than the cashier.

Corrections and complaints

If you spot a factual error — wrong wagering, wrong minimum deposit, stale bonus code — please email us and we will correct it within 48 hours. If you are unhappy with a casino we have ranked, we want to hear that too. Reader payout-time reports are one of the three sources we weigh in the quarterly re-ranking process.