I agree that COVID has caused businesses to look at the bottom line and its the exact reason I'm currently in the process of moving our business (8 locations) away from Tyro. They steadily increased our rate without much warning in the few years leading up to COVID to reach 1.15%, almost 30 basis points more than any large provider. After a few months of telling them we're needing them to improve their offering, they got to a 0.89% rate. This rate offered us is something that any other bank can match. The banks can also undercut the monthly terminal charge Tyro have.
The main reason we signed up with them was their excellent customer support, and the integration with our PoS provider (Kounta/Lightspeed).
Their customer service has drastically declined, where we'd be used to being stuck in a wait queue for an hour for assistance in numerous occasions last year (until we learnt the trick that you go through the phone menu pretending to be a new potential customer.. you get to speak to someone within a minute). Our account manager admitted they were severely struggling with customer service due to lack of staff.
During their major failure/ terminal recall last year, we had 2 sites they failed to ever send replacement terminals after almost daily calls to them begging for updates. We were stuck using a square terminal for 3 months until they finally got their act together.
As for integration, Kounta/Lightspeed now have their own payments system. They offered to match the rate (Tyro emailed me today warning of a rate increase next month to 0.91%, well above major bank providers), and as we already work with them, we have zero monthly terminal fees.
As a business, we have no reason to stick with Tyro. They are more expensive, with worse customer service, and don't offer anything other providers don't already do.
The business has excellent potential, but they have a lot of internal issues impacting their customers directly that aren't noticeable just by looking at their annual/quarterly/weekly reports.
For evidence about poor support, I called them in early February 2021 regarding the expensive rates they were charging us, they raised a ticket over the phone about us wanting a review/discussion regarding our rates. I had 3 more phone calls in the next month before I finally managed to speak to our account manager in earnest about it. Then out of the blue, 2 months late, I got the following email to the initial ticket raised in the first phone call, which relates to my actual query in the very vaguest of ways:
Maybe my poor experiences have tainted it for me, but until they improve the service for customers, I think it's very generously valued based on the poor profitability they currently have.
Full disclosure, I don't hold, and I don't see them being anything other than fairly flat in returns over the next few years. I see the risk of Kounta/Lightspeed phasing out integration of their terminals (they only integrate with Tyro and the old westpac & CBA terminals that are no longer offered by both banks).
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