As New Zealand moves towards a nationwide RUC environment, an important challenge emerging for the private sector is: how can strong RUC compliance outcomes be achieved without turning retailers into enforcement tools?

Our presentation will show that when compliance is made easier, more timely, and more accessible than non-compliance, reliance on enforcement can be reduced.

We will prove that, for much of the market, the central challenge is not enforcement itself, but timely customer re-engagement before non-compliance occurs. We will draw on our research and development, including our 2026 future RUC purchasing behavior study with major New Zealand retail partners, which found that many drivers intend to purchase RUC only when they believe they are nearing depletion. Our research indicates that the most effective intervention window lies between 200 km and 20 km of remaining RUC distance.

Building on these new industry insights we will briefly explore how behavioral modelling, AI, and WOF-anchored usage modelling can be used to identify and re-engage customers within that window without relying on hardware or enforcement-oriented models, which are currently the industry standard. We will briefly explain our new Dynamic Compliance Prediction modelling, which shows that a software-first approach can now estimate RUC depletion windows with a high level of accuracy, creating the first viable software-only pathway to re-engage customers before non-compliance occurs.

The presentation will conclude with trade-offs between hardware-led and software-led re-engagement approaches, and why this matters for future New Zealand RUC retailers seeking scale, trust, and better long-term compliance outcomes.