One in 10 Tyro merchants files a claim

John Kavanagh

More than 3600 merchants using Tyro’s point of sale terminals – about 10 per cent of the company’s total merchant base – have registered with the company for remediation following the company’s week-long outage in January.

The company said in a statement to the ASX yesterday that it has already settled 888 of the claims of financial loss.

Registered merchants are being offered a choice of “accelerated path assessment”, which is an offer of a service fee rebate over a designated period, or “case managed path assessment”, which will investigate the specific claim details.

The company did not say how much it has paid out but at its interim results briefing in February, it reported that the outage had already cost it around A$3 million and would cost it a further $19 million.

To put that figure in context, Tyro’s revenue for the half-year was $107.6 million and its EBITDA was $8.4 million.

In addition to paying claims for financial loss, the company has committed to replacing obsolete terminals and developing a redundancy solution, which involves building a payment dongle that will be supplied to all merchants and will serve as a “failover” – a duplicate system that takes over in the event of a failure.