Independent eftpos provider Tyro surpasses $3.5 billion in transactions

Independent eftpos provider Tyro Payments has vowed to step up its fight against the big banks, after revealing it surpassed $3.5 billion in credit and debit card transactions in 2012.

Tyro Payments, which originally traded as MoneySwitch, was established in 2003 by three former Cisco engineers who saw an opportunity to take on the archaic technology of big banks.

It is run by Jost Stollman, who previously founded German IT company CompuNet before selling it to GE Capital in 1996.

Tyro has no external venture capital. It has been fully funded by its executives, directors, and independent and strategic investors.

Among its directors is Mike Cannon-Brookes, co-founder of Australian tech company Atlassian.

Tyro is Australia’s only independent eftpos provider competing with the major retail banks, and processes more than half of all Medicare claims that go through the Australian Eftpos system.

The company has confirmed it surpassed $3.5 billion in credit and debit card transactions in 2012. Compared to 2011, the value of transactions increased by 51%.

Since 2007, the value of Tyro transactions has risen 145% year-on-year.

Tyro, which became profitable in March last year, is primarily focused on Australia’s small and medium business market, and claims to have attracted more than 7,300 businesses.

Its latest half yearly financial results show a profit of $1.2 million and a revenue increase of 44% to $19 million in the first half of 2012/13, up from $335,777 in the first half of 2007/08.

“We are the David of the financial services market, and the big banks represent Goliath… Tyro is helping to change the face of credit and debit card transactions in Australia,” Stollmann says.

In 2011, Tyro told a Senate inquiry that retailers would soon be hit with an additional $250 million in credit and debit card fees from the big banks.

Now the company has made some predictions about tap-and-go technology.

“In 2013, Australia will move closer towards the cashless society with tap-and-go terminals in petrol stations, supermarkets, corner stores and clothing stores accepting payments of less than $100 in an instant,” Stollman says.

“The number of tap-and-go eftpos terminals in Australia tripled from 30,000 in 2011 to more than 100,000 last year. We should expect that growth to continue this year.”

Stollman says Tryo will continue to invest in new payment solutions.

“We have a cloud-based architecture in-house, so we are an ideal partner for all the point-of-sale vendors who will introduce cloud-based solutions,” he says.

“Because we are a technically-oriented banking solution, we’re excited about all these new solutions on the horizon… We are hoping to maintain our fast growth rate – we’re growing at approximately 50%.

“We are now at 7,300 businesses, and there are still lots of merchants who might appreciate our solution services.”