Paying an infringement fine
An infringement notice is the piece of paper that starts everything else on this site. This page explains what is on it and what each part means. It is not a payment page: this site takes no money, holds no records and asks for nothing.
How long you have
Your deadline is on your notice, and this site will not guess at it
This is the one question this page is asked most, and the honest answer is a pointer rather than a number. Here is exactly why.
Not set by the Land Transport Act
Check your infringement notice for your deadline
Land Transport Act 1998, s 140(1)(f) — Summary Proceedings Act 1957
Why not just print one
A site that prints a day-count here may well be right — but it is quoting an instrument this one does not hold, and it should be able to show you which. Your notice states your period, and it is the document that governs your matter.
What it is
An infringement notice is not a conviction
It is the instrument that starts everything else on this site, and the statutory term for it is also what people actually call it — which is unusual, and makes the legal register and the everyday one the same here.
An infringement notice records that an infringement offence is alleged and states the infringement fee for it. Paying it deals with the matter without a court and without a conviction being entered against you. That is what makes the infringement system a separate track from the ordinary conviction route — and it is why the fee ladder simply stops where it stops, rather than continuing upward: past that point the matter is not an infringement matter at all.
What the notice does not do by itself is record demerit points. Whether points are recorded is decided by a different provision entirely, and for a camera-detected offence the answer is that none are.
What is on it
The parts of the notice, and which of them decide the answer
Three of these change what the rest of this site says about your matter. The reference number is not one of them — it identifies your notice to the authority, and to nobody else.
- The recorded speed and the limit
- The difference between them is what the fee ladder is priced by. Nothing else changes the fee — not your income, not your history, not whether it is your first time.
- How the offence was detected
- A camera or an enforcement officer. It decides whether demerit points are recorded at all, and it is the highest-value line on the page.
- The infringement fee
- The amount for that band of the schedule. If it does not match the ladder on the speeding page, the notice is the document to query — and the authority named on it is who to query.
- The time you have to pay
- Stated on the notice itself, because the Act requires the notice to state it and does not fix the number anywhere. This site does not state a day-count.
- The notice or reference number
- It identifies your notice to the issuing authority. This site never asks for it, cannot look anything up with it, and has nowhere to send it.
- Who issued it
- The authority named on the notice is the authority on your matter — for a query, a dispute, or a payment arrangement.
What to do
In order, and the first step is the cheapest
- Read the deadline off the noticeIt is stated there, and it is the only reliable source for it. Nothing on this site or any other can tell you what yours is.
- Check the fee against the scheduleThe speeding page renders the whole ladder from the Regulations. A mismatch is worth querying with the authority that issued the notice.
- Check whether demerit points are involvedFor a camera detection they are not. For an officer detection they are, and the demerit page sets out what that means for your tally.
- Pay, or contact the authority named on the noticePayment goes to the issuing authority, never through this site. If you cannot pay, or you dispute the matter, that authority is who to talk to.
Who issued it
Four kinds of authority issue road infringement notices here
Which one sent yours is printed on the notice, and it decides where the payment goes and who can discuss the matter with you. This site is not any of them and cannot act for you with any of them.
- NZ Police
- Enforcement officers issue notices at the roadside, and a notice may also follow a camera detection. Which of those applied to yours is the line that decides whether demerit points are recorded at all.
- NZTA
- The transport agency holds the driver licence register, including the demerit points currently recorded against a licence. For what is actually on your record, it is the only authority — and this site is not a substitute for it.
- The courts and the Ministry of Justice
- Court fines are a different instrument from an infringement fee, collected through a different route. Where a matter has reached that stage, the paperwork you were sent names it — this site does not describe the procedure that gets a matter there, because that procedure is not in the sources it works from.
- A local authority, such as Auckland Transport
- Road controlling authorities issue notices in their own areas under their own bylaws, and a bylaw fee may differ from the statutory figure. Where a council issued your notice, that council is the authority on it.
One distinction is worth carrying away, because the two words are used interchangeably in conversation and are not interchangeable at all. An infringement fee is what the notice states: it is set by the schedule, paying it ends the matter, and no conviction is entered. A court fine is what a court imposes on conviction — a different instrument, a different maximum, and a different collection route. This site is about the first of those. It does not publish court-fine content, and it will not tell you what a court would do with your matter.
Where to pay
This site does not take payments
There is no form on it, no account, and no lookup. Payment is made to the authority named on your notice.
The official service
Pay a fine or infringement
The authority named on your notice — often the Ministry of Justice or NZ Police
The notice states who issued it and how to pay it. That authority holds your matter; this site holds nothing about it at all.
This site never asks for a driver licence number, a notice reference, a date of birth or a plate, and it renders no lookup form. Use the service above.
Pay a fine or infringementWhy there is no deadline figure on this page
The Land Transport Act 1998 requires an infringement notice to STATE a time within which the fee may be paid (s 140(1)(f)) but does not itself fix that number anywhere in this corpus. The only day-count the Act supplies near infringement-fee timing is 43 days (s 88(5)(a)), and that figure is scoped narrowly to fixing the DEEMED offence/conviction date for demerit-point purposes, not to a general payment deadline. The general deadline is set by the prescribed form and/or the Summary Proceedings Act 1957 (s 21(10), cross-referenced by s 140(1)(g) but never reproduced in the Land Transport Act 1998), neither of which is held by this lane.
Land Transport Act 1998 s 140(1)(f)/(g) — Land Transport Act 1998 s 88(5)(a) (the 43-day figure, scoped to demerit timing only)
Source — Land Transport (Offences and Penalties) Regulations 1999 (SR 1999/99), reg 6 — as at 19 May 2026 (ltop-1999 consolidation stamp)