New Zealand Start-up Visa

The applicant must show the ability to make a capital investment of at least NZD 100,000, and must hold further funds to support themselves and any accompanying family on top of that capital. The funds cannot be borrowed and cannot have a loan or bond against them.

Excluded from capital investment: passive or speculative investments such as reserve funds and term deposits; items for personal use such as a car, boat or home; any salary or wages paid to the applicant or their immediate family; and residential property investments unless part of the business plan.

The NZD 100,000 requirement may be waived where the business is in science, ICT or another high-value export sector and shows a high level of innovation or short-term growth prospects — but a waiver forfeits all points for capital investment on the points scale

What is received is a work visa, not a residence status, and the authority defines it by a single purpose: apply for it if you want to work in your own business in New Zealand.

The three years are not one block but two conditional stages: the holder may stay twelve months while starting the business up, then a further twenty-four months — but only once they have shown the authority that the business has been set up.

Two thirds of the visa is therefore time to be earned rather than time granted.

What this route opens, and its reason for existing, is the entrepreneur resident visa — the authority states on the page that this visa can lead to a resident visa.

That door has three different entrances, and misreading one miscalculates the whole path.

The first is having been self-employed in New Zealand for at least six months. The second is having operated a self-employed business for two years on another visa.

The third applies where self-employed for less than two years, and requires all three of the following: holding a current Entrepreneur Work Visa, having invested capital of at least NZD 500,000, and having created at least three new jobs in New Zealand.

And two absolute bars stand at the entrance: the authority will not grant this visa to anyone who has been adjudged bankrupt or been involved in a business failure in the last five years, nor to anyone involved in any kind of business fraud or financial wrongdoing.

The route is closed to new applications; existing holders may still apply to renew, and the renewal rhythm is recorded in the timing cell of this table.

Three quite different clocks run here, and merging them misreads the route. The first is length of stay: up to three years per grant.

The second is processing speed, and the authority publishes it as a percentile rather than a deadline — 80 per cent of applications completed within fifteen months.

No ceiling is published for the remaining twenty per cent, so fifteen months describes the bulk rather than committing to any individual file.

The third is the extension path: at the end of the first three years the holder may apply for one further visa and one only, so the practical ceiling of this route is six years.

That further application is not an administrative step but an assessment decided by a business immigration specialist, and the applicant must satisfy that specialist on three counts: that there are valid reasons for needing another visa in order to meet the requirements of the Entrepreneur Resident Visa.

That the time already spent in New Zealand went into establishing and operating the original business proposal; and that any departure from that original proposal was approved by a specialist beforehand.

One contextual condition changes what all three clocks mean: this route is closed to new applications, so the fifteen-month figure now describes only the further applications of people who already hold the visa.

The obligation here is not measured in days of presence but in doing what the proposal promised.

First stage: the business must be started within twelve months of the visa being granted, and at the end of that stage the holder must show that the capital named in the business plan has been put in, along with reasonable steps to establish or invest in the business.

Two prohibitions run throughout the stay: no applying for or accepting welfare assistance — and that prohibition covers both the partner and any children granted visas on the back of it; while study is limited to a maximum of three months in any twelve-month period.

But the tightest part comes at the next visa application, because that is when the authority tests four things the first stage did not.

One, the applicant must show an intention to spend the further time running the very business proposed. Two, they must have — in addition to the investment capital — enough funds to finance the business and to afford their own living costs and those of any family in the application; the capital cannot double as the living fund.

Three, the applicant and family must meet health and character requirements at the standard for residence rather than the standard for a work visa — a higher bar applied mid-journey.

Four, they must continue to meet the fit and proper person requirements. The periods attaching to that further application, including the six-year ceiling, are recorded in the timing cell of this table.

A partner and dependent children aged 19 and younger, a narrower limit than the 24 years allowed on the same country investor visa. The relationship must be shown to be genuine through a marriage certificate and birth certificates, and family members must meet health, character and identity requirements where necessary.

The partner and children need not meet the English language requirement at this stage, but on a later residence application they must either meet it or pay the immigration authority for English language classes before a resident visa can be granted.

Bringing family raises the money that must be shown. On top of the capital investment, the applicant must have enough to support themselves and everyone coming to New Zealand with them, and that sum is counted separately from the capital.

The capital may be owned by the applicant or jointly by the applicant and their partner. Where it is held jointly with someone who is not a partner or dependent child, only the value of the applicant's own share counts.

The status this programme grants, whether a visa or a residence permit, does not replace the holder's passport. The holder still travels on the passport of their own country, so the figure below belongs to the New Zealand passport and becomes the holder's only once they are issued a New Zealand passport.

According to the Passport Index of Prosperous Intelligence, on data dated 30 September 2026, the New Zealand passport reaches 196 destinations without applying for a consular visa in advance. The figure combines three forms of entry and does not count an e-Visa that must be obtained beforehand:

It is therefore a measure of how easily the holder travels, not a count of visa-free countries in the narrow sense.

For comparison, on the same source and the same method of counting, the Vietnamese passport reaches 44 destinations. The two lists of destinations do not nest inside one another, so the difference is an indication rather than a list of places newly opened.

Prosperous Intelligence dates its data and advises checking with the destination’s official authorities before travelling.

The immigration authority does not set out the tax position of the visa holder. Tax appears here in the role of evidence, in two places.

First, in the fit and proper person test: every business the applicant has owned must have complied with all immigration, employment and taxation laws, and the applicant confirms this in the application form.

Second, in proving lawful funds and proving the business has been set up: tax returns or tax certificates sit in the list of evidence that funds and assets were earned or acquired lawfully, while GST records and other tax records sit in the list of evidence that the business has been established and is trading

The published figure is a floor rather than a total: the authority states from NZD 12,380, and prints no table separating the application fee from the immigration levy, so anyone costing this out cannot tell which part is which.

The same amount falls due again for a further visa — the authority states that a further application requires both the fee and the immigration levy.

Beyond the fee, three groups of mandatory documents all cost money and sit outside that figure.

The first is health: a chest X-ray and a medical examination are required; anyone who has spent six months in a row in China, Hong Kong or Macau must provide an X-ray taken within the last three months, even if one has been provided to the authority before.

The second is character: anyone aged seventeen or over must provide a police certificate from their country of citizenship and from every country they have lived in for five years or more since turning seventeen — someone who has lived in three countries needs three certificates.

Those certificates must be less than six months old at the time of application, so a file assembled slowly will need them obtained again. The third is translation: a police certificate not in English must be accompanied by a translation, and the authority states this applies even to certificates recording no convictions.

One silence is worth recording because it bears on risk: the page contains no statement at all about what, if anything, is refundable if an application is declined.