tyro

A group of 17 restaurants have filed two lawsuits against the maker and installer of a point-of-sale (POS) system that was allegedly hacked with a keylogger—a hack that exposed about 100,000 credit cards and cost local banks at least $1.2 million.

The Minister for Human Services, Chris Bowen MP, announced that more than one million services were processed using Medicare Easyclaim last month. This EFTPOS-enabled electronic claiming channel enables patients to receive on-the-spot Medicare rebates into their bank account without having to visit a Medicare office. 

Moneyswitch Ltd, trading as Tyro payments, may finally be achieving some real traction in the eftpos/credit card acquiring market. Clients can be attracted to look to new suppliers, and there are now plenty of case studies of adopters of the Tyro payments solution to make additional sales more likely than before.

Payment card companies have announced that they will toughen security standards for financial institutions, merchants and consumers in 2010 in an attempt to stop the growth of identity theft and other forms of payment system fraud.

A group of US restaurants have filed a class action lawsuit against a point of sale vendor after customers had their identities stolen by using uncompliant terminals. It is seeking compensation to repay the penalties levied by the credit card companies and costs to track down and repair the POS system problems.

Note: The Tyro integration architecture eliminates the risk by separating the payment acceptance and authorization (EFTPOS) from the recording and provision of goods/services (POS system).

Smarte Carte deployed wireless and DCC-enabled EFTPOS terminals at Melbourne, Sydney, Perth and Cairns airports. The terminals offer greater flexibility, are easy to use, run smoothly and require no ongoing support.

Of 76 million patient-claimed Medicare rebates, most are still paid in cash. 2763 practices have signed up to Easyclaim. But "Easyclaim just takes too long and takes up busy staff time", says Dr Steve Hambleton, GP and VP of the Australian Medical Association.

Tyro note: Stand-alone Easyclaim launched by the major banks was indeed pushed back as too cumbersome. The Tyro integrated Easyclaim solution is fully automated, takes seconds and is enthusiastically endorsed by the user community.

Tyro Payments says it is processing more Medicare Easyclaim rebates than all other providers put together. "We have about 800 practices signed up, with about 500 active right now," said Garry Duursma, VP Sales and Marketing for Tyro "We have already handled 500,000 Easyclaim transactions."

Visa announced that chip and PIN will become mandatory for all Australian Visa cards from 1 April 2013 on, as part of a wide-ranging agenda to cut fraud. By 1 January 2010, all new Visa cards will be issued on chip. Half a million merchant point of sale terminals and thousands of ATMs will need to be upgraded.

Note: Tyro is 100 percent chip and PIN enabled

The Australian Retailers Association has laughed off comments by the Australian Bankers' Association about merchant transaction fees, saying the proposed interim Eftpos interchange fee standard could increase fees for retailers by up to 17 cents per transaction. 

ARA executive director and chair of the Australian Merchants Payment Forum, Russell Zimmerman, said the increased fees could result in a $250 million bill for retailers across the country over 12 months.

There were only two real player in opposition. One is Tyro (a super, super specialised type of bank and a rare new entrant into the closed world of payments). The other is the Australian Merchants Payment Forum.

Tyro welcomes the Reserve Bank of Australia's proposal to establish a level playing field between domestic and international debit card systems as long as the interchange fee is at the current minus 4 to 5 cents regulated range guaranteeing Australian consumer, patients and merchants the continued use of a no-frills, low-cost, basic bank account access.

We do not see a benefit in transferring potentially more than a quarter of a billion dollars from Australian consumers and merchants to the large issuing banks allowing them to increase the interchange fees by 16 to 17 cents to a cap of 12 cents.

This prices the low-cost domestic EFTPOS payment system out of the market, forces higher prices into the retail market and deprives the acquiring side of the investment incentive to promote innovation.

The Reserve Bank of Australia, Payment Systems Board (PSB) shows in its annual report that there has been strong growth in surcharging by merchants over recent years, although the majority of merchants still do not surcharge. Even among very small merchants, less than 30 per cent have no plans to surcharge.

Integration is critical for retailers upgrading their point of purchase technology. It's a matter of integrate or die, say the experts ...
In the point of sale technology arena, there's a race on to embrace technology - and it's all in aid of improving the bottom line through accuracy and efficiency.

The first, and so far only, non-bank to receive a special authorised deposit-taking institution (ADI) licence as an acquirer is Tyro Payments. With its special licence, Tyro Payments has become not a bank as such, but an acquirer with a banking authority and a principal member of the card schemes.

Over time, the newer participants may settle into their niche positions in the payments chain, but they may also bypass traditional players with next-generation solutions.

At its meeting on 21 August, the Payments System Board considered whether the conditions have been met for the removal of interchange regulation. The Board was not yet satisfied that such conditions have been met.

The Commerce Commission and MasterCard International Incorporated (MasterCard) have signed an agreement settling the Commission's claims that MasterCard's credit card scheme rules providing for the payment of multilateral interchange fees, together with related rules, breached the restrictive trade practices provisions of the Commerce Act.

The Payments System Board may be on the verge of dropping most, and perhaps all, of its regulations governing credit cards and scheme debit.

The Commerce Commission has signed an agreement with the Visa International Service Association and Visa Worldwide Pte Limited (Visa) settling the Commission's claims against Visa in relation to credit card interchange fees.

Integration is critical for retailers upgrading their point of purchase technology. It's a matter of integrate or die, say the experts...

The Payments System Board dropped a pretty big hint yesterday that regulation of Eftpos interchange fees, and access, may remain in place.

Jost Stollmann came to Australia from Germany in 2004 on a NSW sponsored investor provisional 165 visa. Jost was the founder of CompuNet, Germany's largest systems integration company in the 1990s, and planned to invest in an IT start up company in Sydney.

Medicare is launching an advertising blitz and mailout to seven million cardholders this week, urging them to make electronic claims at the doctor's practice rather than at a Medicare office.

The vast majority of credit and charge card transactions in Australia will be chip authenticated within 3 years, according to the chief executive of the Australian Payments Clearing Association.

The bright sparks at Tyro Payments have spent the most on their endeavour to crack the merchant acquiring market, and also switching, in Australia.

In the largely closed world of banking and payments, three entities found the courage over the 2000s to have a crack at the business of "switching", the careful, efficient and hopefully reliable business of carrying information on debit and credit card payments from one bank to another.

Australian EFT-POS specialist Tyro - formerly known as MoneySwitch - has launched an integrated broadband solution for the duty free operator, Nuance Group.
(www.rustreport.com.au)

The drawn-out struggle between MasterCard and the European Commission over the level of interchange fees on card-based payments in Europe has finally been resolved.

(31 March 2009 - Australia) The RBA has suggested that Australia's current EFTPOS system could be the next system to get an upgrade, whether done willingly by industry participants or regulated by the RBA.

Just a day after Reserve Bank assistant governor Philip Lowe told the banking industry it needed to develop competitive retail payments infrastructure, RBA governor Glenn Stevens has spoken about the "particular challenges" the central bank has faced in promoting competition and efficiency in the payments system.

When the Medicare Easyclaim system was introduced in 2006 it was set a target of handling 60 per cent of payments at doctors' surgeries by June 2008. It got to one per cent.