Traditional banks have not served the small-to-medium business (SME) community well. Now there’s an alternative. Australia’s SMEs, software and fintech companies, and Tyro are coming together to build a new ecosystem to deliver banking solutions.

SMEs are essential to productivity growth and job creation in our economy. A new banking ecosystem can deliver solutions that will allow SMEs in whatever business, whether it be retail shops, pharmacies, medical practices, restaurants, pubs, or hotels, to compete better.

The building blocks for the ecosystem, that will deliver the SME banking solutions of tomorrow, are coming together.

Banking platform

On August 19, 2015, the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) revoked prior conditions on Tyro Payment’s Authority to carry on banking business which now allows Tyro to take money on deposit (Gazette – C2015G01357). This enables Australia’s first independent EFTPOS provider Tyro Payments to compete head-on with the banking establishment and do it as a regulated banking entity.

Software industry

Australia’s point-of-sale, practice automation, accounting and other business software vendors can work with Tyro to enrich their solutions with integrated banking features that will ultimately make payments, deposits and lending easier to access and use, all with a click of the mouse or tap of the finger. Everything has to be seamlessly integrated.

Tyro Fintech Hub

Australia’s growing number of fintech startups, which provide innovative solutions such as market or crowd-based funding, forex, loyalty and digital currency transactions or funds management solutions, now have a hub where like-minded people can interact and grow. Tyro has begun work on selecting a partner to co-develop a first set of required open APIs.

This new world will not be built in a day. Tyro doubled its engineering team last year and will do it again to accelerate product development. So watch this space.