Okay, so I’ve prepared some questions…
That’s how our conversation with Steve Zinsli, founder of Extraordinary started. What followed was far more than a typical Q&A — it was an honest conversation that traced a journey filled with steep learning (especially around tax fluency), unexpected turns, hard-won lessons, and one guiding belief: healthcare and wellbeing should be accessible to everyone. Before it was Extraordinary, the company was HealthNow — a healthcare-first business built to solve a deeply personal problem. Zinsli grew up in a household where healthcare was a luxury, not a given. That experience ignited a mission: to make healthcare not only accessible but affordable. HealthNow did that by building a payment platform that enabled employers to fund care for their employees — no copayments, no barriers. But soon, the demand expanded. As broader benefits became part of the offering — from transport and clothing to gifting and recognition — the team realised they were onto something bigger. The name HealthNow no longer fit. While working through a naming exercise, they discovered the term “extraordinary payment” — a technical definition for any payment made outside of regular wages. It was a moment of unexpected clarity. This wasn’t just a health payments company anymore — it was a platform for modern, flexible, values-aligned benefits.
And so, Extraordinary was born.
Today, Extraordinary empowers employers to offer pre-loaded, purpose-specific cards that employees can use for health, transport, gifting, recognition, and more — with flexibility, compliance, and tax-efficiency built in. Their latest initiative is one of the most exciting yet. Thanks to a successful binding ruling from Inland Revenue — supported by expert tax guidance — Extraordinary can now enable employees to pay for public transport using pre-tax income. The result? The average Kiwi commuter could save between $730 and $1,300 a year — that’s your weekly coffees and a few bags of groceries, on the house. But this is about more than savings. Public transport already accounts for 89 million trips in Auckland and 40 million in Wellington each year, the potential for impact is huge. With pre-tax savings now on offer, more Kiwis are likely to make the switch from cars to buses, trains, and ferries. Making their commute not only cheaper, but greener too. Employers benefit too:
- No fringe benefit tax (FBT) for small companies
- FBT optimisation for larger employers, through Extraordinary’s employee attribution model
- Stronger employee retention and recruitment through meaningful, easy-to-use perks
- Sustainability wins as businesses reduce greenhouse gas tied to employee commuting
And employees? They get more value from their pay — without needing to jump through reimbursement hoops or use personal funds upfront.
It’s such a simple shift, but it gives employees an immediate and tangible benefit. They feel it every week.
ZinsliExtraordinary
After 3.5 years of building, refining, and proving the model in Aotearoa, the Extraordinary team is now expanding across New Zealand and Australia, with plans to explore markets like the United States. In the short term, they’re focused on enhancing the platform’s usability and onboarding more enterprise clients — particularly those with large, distributed workforces where one-size-fits-one benefit solutions matter most. From a simple healthcare benefit to a fully-fledged platform, Extraordinary is proving that smart, flexible perks aren’t just nice-to-haves — they’re the new standard. And that’s what Aotearoa — and the world — needs right now.