Tyro Review

Tyro Payments Limited is a Sydney-based merchant acquirer and bank, founded in 2003, granted a specialist credit card institution licence in 2005 and a full Australian banking licence in 2015, and listed on the ASX as TYR since 2019. It serves more than 77,800 Australian merchants, processed $44.3 billion in transaction value in the year to June 2026, and reported gross profit of $231.8 million, EBITDA of $66.9 million and statutory profit before tax of $22.3 million for that year. Its pricing is published and flat: 1.3% including GST on every card transaction for businesses under $20,000 a month, a custom quote above that, and a Pro Touch or Pro Key terminal at $29 a month, a Pro Lite at $19, or a Tap to Pay app on your own phone for nothing — with no lock-in contract, no joining fee and no break fee. New customers transacting more than $20,000 a month who join before 24 November 2026 get 1% until 31 March 2027. Takings settle seven days a week, the same day, into a fee-free Tyro Transaction Account protected by the Financial Claims Scheme, or next business day to an outside bank. Tyro integrates with more than 580 POS and practice-management systems, routes debit through the cheapest network with Tap & Save, and lends up to $400,000 against card takings. The record has one scar: a January 2021 terminal outage that left some merchants unable to take cards for weeks and produced a Federal Court class action that Tyro settled in principle in February 2023 without admitting liability. Nigel Lee became chief executive in January 2026, and Tyro's Australian Trustpilot profile is 4.2 from about 560 reviews, 69% five-star and 20% one-star.

Estimated annual cost at three realistic processing volumes, using Tyro’s published online rate plus monthly fees. Real costs vary with average transaction size, chargeback rate, and any negotiated terms.

What it is

Tyro was founded in Sydney in 2003 by Paul Wood, Peter Haig and Andrew Rothwell, in response to the Reserve Bank's call for more competition in a terminal market the four major banks owned between them, with the stated aim of being the most efficient acquirer of electronic payments in Australia. In 2005 it became the first technology company to receive an Australian specialist credit card institution licence and processed its first live transaction; in 2015 that licence was replaced by a full banking licence — the first new domestic banking licence in more than a decade — and its first bank account followed in 2016. It listed on the Australian Securities Exchange as TYR in 2019, in what it describes as that year's largest IPO by market capitalisation, is headquartered in Sydney, and operates under Australian Financial Services Licence 471951. It calls itself the largest EFTPOS provider among Australian banks outside the big four.

It is a mid-sized company by acquirer standards and a large one by Australian fintech standards. For the year ended 30 June 2026 it processed $44.3 billion in transaction value, up 2.9%, across more than 77,800 merchants, and reported gross profit of $231.8 million, up 5.3%, EBITDA of $66.9 million, up 8.6%, statutory profit before tax of $22.3 million and free cash flow of $29.4 million, up almost half. Health — medical, dental, allied health and veterinary practices using Tyro terminals with claiming built in — processed $7.9 billion and is growing at about twice the rate of that market. Banking is the other growth line: active accounts rose 35% to 14,505, deposits 27% to $118.9 million, loan originations 19% to $187.8 million and loan balances by a third. Nigel Lee, previously Asia-Pacific managing director at Ingenico, became chief executive on 12 January 2026 after Jon Davey stepped down, and in December 2025 Tyro agreed to buy Thriday, a Melbourne accounting and cash-flow app, to extend the banking product into bookkeeping.

What it costs

Tyro's pricing page is the reason it is on this site. Every Pro Series terminal and the phone-based Tap to Pay app carries the same transaction fee, 1.3% including GST, on Visa, Mastercard and eftpos, for businesses taking under $20,000 a month in card payments; above that Tyro asks you to call for a custom quote, and that is where a bigger business should expect to negotiate. Rental is $29 a month for the Pro Touch, a six-inch touchscreen terminal, and the Pro Key, a four-inch screen with a physical glove-friendly keypad; $19 for the smaller Pro Lite; and nothing for Tap to Pay on an iPhone or Android phone. There is no joining fee, no lock-in, no long-term commitment and no cancel or break fee. Payments taken remotely through Payment Links or the hosted checkout are 1.4% including GST on Visa, Mastercard and American Express under OptBlue; a merchant with its own American Express agreement keeps its negotiated Amex rate and pays Tyro a 0.1% switch fee, invoiced separately.

Until 24 November 2026 Tyro is offering new customers who already transact more than $20,000 a month a 1% rate to 31 March 2027, after which the standard 1.3% applies unless agreed otherwise in writing. Two built-in features lower the effective cost further. Tap & Save is least-cost routing: a contactless tap on a dual-network debit card is sent down the cheaper of eftpos and the international scheme, with Tyro careful to say it guarantees no particular saving and that credit taps are not covered. Dynamic Surcharging lets merchants pass on the cost of acceptance within the rules the RBA sets and the ACCC enforces — though, as below, that ends for eftpos, Mastercard and Visa on 1 October 2026. Tyro Health is priced separately on its own site.

Contract and settlement

The terms are as short as the pricing. No lock-in, no minimum term, terminals rented month to month, and nothing to pay on leaving. The Electronic Payments Facility terms put the chargeback risk on card-not-present, payment-link and MOTO transactions squarely on the merchant, and MOTO acceptance is subject to approval; Payment Links come with 3-D Secure to reduce that exposure, do not support JCB, and are unavailable to some business types. Settlement is where the bank licence earns its keep. Takings settle into a Tyro Transaction Account seven days a week, at a time you choose between 8pm and 5am Sydney time, and are visible within 30 minutes; that covers eftpos, Mastercard, Visa, UnionPay and Tyro's online portal, plus American Express and JCB on Tyro's direct-settlement programme, and excludes Alipay, HealthPoint and anything Afterpay, Amex or JCB settle themselves. Settling to an outside bank is next business day and, depending on the receiving bank, up to three business days; Flexible Settlement Allocation lets you send a percentage to an external account and leave the rest in the Tyro account earning interest.

The account itself has no account-keeping fee, allows up to ten accounts, comes with a free Visa debit card that works with Apple Pay and Google Pay, feeds Xero and MYOB, and is covered by the Financial Claims Scheme up to $250,000 per account holder because Tyro is an authorised deposit-taking institution. Term deposits sit alongside it, and the Tyro Business Loan advances up to $400,000 against card-processing history, approved in as little as 60 seconds by Tyro's account, and repaid from takings — a merchant-cash-advance product in bank clothing, and one that Trustpilot reviewers mention warmly and repeatedly.

The regulatory shift

On 31 March 2026 the Reserve Bank of Australia published the conclusions of its review of merchant card payment costs and surcharging: surcharging on debit, prepaid and credit cards ends on 1 October 2026 for eftpos, Mastercard and Visa, domestic interchange caps fall on the same date, and from 1 April 2027 foreign-issued cards get an interchange cap and large acquirers and the schemes must publish the fees they charge. Tyro welcomed the decision the same day, said it did not change its guidance, and argued that its cost-plus and card-based pricing is already the shape the reforms demand while merchants on opaque bundled or surcharge-led pricing elsewhere would reassess their providers. That is self-interested but not wrong: the reforms reward acquirers whose fees can be read off a page, which is Tyro's whole pitch. For a Tyro merchant the practical effect is that 1.3% stops being passed to the customer and comes off the margin from October.

Reputation

Tyro's Australian Trustpilot profile shows a 4.2 from about 560 reviews, 69% five-star and 20% one-star, and the company replies to every negative review, typically within a day. The praise is for reliability at the counter, predictable settlement, clear pricing and the speed of the loan product; the complaints are the usual acquirer set — a held or declined settlement, a support call that went nowhere, a fee that surprised someone. It ranks first of one in Trustpilot's EFTPOS-supplier category and seventh of ten among payment services, which says more about the categories than the company.

The episode that defines Tyro's reputation is January 2021. A terminal connectivity fault — reported at the time to lie in specific versions of the terminal software supplied by Worldline, the device manufacturer — left a portion of its fleet unable to process cards, some merchants for weeks, while devices were swapped and repaired; Tyro issued ASX announcements on 7, 13, 19 and 27 January as it worked through it. Bannister Law filed a class action in the Federal Court of Australia on behalf of affected merchants, announced by Tyro on 20 October 2021, alleging misleading and deceptive conduct and breaches of statutory guarantees and contractual warranties. After a court-ordered mediation Tyro announced on 17 February 2023 that it had entered a settlement deed, subject to court approval, without admitting liability, and said the settlement would not involve additional cost beyond the remediation it had already paid to merchants. Tyro now publishes a payment-acceptance availability figure of 99.99% and a public status page. The lesson for a merchant is not that Tyro is unreliable — it has been the opposite since — but that any acquirer's software fault reaches every terminal at once, and a business that cannot survive a week without cards should think about a back-up.

The verdict

Tyro is the transparent option in a market that is about to be forced toward transparency: a published flat rate, terminals you can read the price of, no contract, and a bank account that pays your takings out the same night. The integrations, the health claiming and the lending make it more than a terminal. It is not the cheapest acquirer for a high-volume, debit-heavy business, its e-commerce is basic, same-day money only lands in its own account, and the 2021 outage is a fair thing to hold against it. A B+ is a strong recommendation for the small and mid-sized Australian businesses it is built for, with the caveat that above $20,000 a month the number on the website is the opening bid.