Tyro slowly making progress

Payments acquirer Tyro has signed up about three thousand merchants in the three years since launching the IP based system, including more than 1000 surgeries and pharmacies. Almost half of Tyro's revenue now comes from the health market.

Tyro reported a $1.8 million loss for the year ended June 2010, up from a $5.1 million loss last year. Revenue was up from $6.3 million to $14.3 million.

Medicare rebates brought in $1.1 million for Tyro, up from just $33,000 last year, while merchant service fees were up for the year from $3.7 million last year to $9.5 million this year.

"The numbers speak for themselves this year," said director and chief executive Jost Stollmann.

"You can see the clear pattern of our costs flattening out and the revenue line growing. Break even point is in sight for us, our business model has been validated."

The business model focuses on point of sale software vendors as the major sales channel and eight more were certified during the year to sell Tyro, taking the total number to 25.

MYOB has adopted Tyro for its MYOB Eftpos product which Stollmann said can be installed by the customer.

The major initiative for Tyro this year is the development of a restaurant/hospitality application.

Tyro's low costs and reliability are the key to the future of the business said Stollmann.

"The RBA data shows that acquiring margins are going down, down, down.

"Banks are going to have to refresh their old systems, and look how unreliable they have been this year, so we think we are in a good position," said Stollmann.

"We have no down time, our transactions are processed faster - within two to three seconds - and our ongoing costs are lower.

"Merchants in this country have been educated to expect bad service and problems, they just put up with it," said Stollmann.

"Banks are not good at helping merchants with their issues and problems quickly. We are giving the POS software vendor, who often gets called anyway in the event of an urgent merchant issue, the ability to provide more service and get a revenue share."

"We have little scale and I think there are some in the market waiting to see if we are going to be around long term before committing.

"But we have been in business for seven years now so those issues will continue to fade for us," said Stollmann