The New Zealand dollar (Māori: tāra o Aotearoa; sign: $; code: NZD) is the official currency and legal tender of New Zealand, the Cook Islands, Niue, the Ross Dependency, Tokelau, and a British territory, the Pitcairn Islands.

It is the tenth most traded currency in the world, representing 2.1% of global foreign exchange market daily turnover in 2019.

The idea fell on fertile ground, and in 1963, the Government decided to decimalise New Zealand currency.

[7] The Decimal Currency Act was passed in 1964, setting the date of transition to 10 July 1967.

[4] On 11 June 2007 the Reserve Bank sold an unknown worth of New Zealand dollars for nine billion USD in an attempt to drive down its value.

Two suspected interventions followed, but they were not as successful as the first: the first appeared to be initially effective, with the dollar dropping to approximately US$0.7490 from near US$0.7620.

[14] By late 2012, the dollar was holding above 80 US cents, occasionally reaching 85¢, prompting calls from the Green Party for quantitative easing.

Those modern art and sculpture themed designs were leaked to a newspaper and met a very negative public reaction.

[19] In 1999, Ian Rank-Broadley's portrait of the Queen was introduced and the legend rearranged to read "NEW ZEALAND ELIZABETH II".

After a three-month public submission period that ended on 4 February 2005, the Reserve Bank announced on 31 March that it would go ahead with the proposed changes.

Commemorative coins, with face values of 50c, were issued in 2015 and 2018 to mark the centenary of the Gallipoli landings[20] and of Armistice Day.

[24] The notes were changed slightly in 1981 due to a change of printer (from De La Rue to Bradbury, Wilkinson & Co.)—the most noticeable difference being the portrait based upon a photograph by Peter Grugeon, in which Queen Elizabeth II is wearing Grand Duchess Vladimir's tiara and Queen Victoria's golden jubilee necklace.

With the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system in 1971, both Australia and New Zealand converted the mostly-fixed foreign exchange regimes to a moving peg against the US dollar.

According to the Bank for International Settlements, the New Zealand dollar's share of global foreign exchange market daily turnover in 2016 was 2.1% (up from 1.6% in 2010) giving it a rank of 11th.

[28] Trading in the currency has climbed steadily since the same survey in 1998 when the NZD's ranking was 17th and the share of turnover was just 0.2%.