Australians may love the convenience of ‘tap-and-go’ but this comes at a cost for retailers, with the fees for these payments about four times higher than for eftpos.
To address this, the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics recommended banks offer a lower cost model starting from 1 April.
Business only bank Tyro is first-to-market with a solution, launching Tap & Save, an initiative that allows merchants to process debit tap-and-go payments through the eftpos network.
The fintech said it will offer least-cost routing to merchants, which gives local businesses the choice to automatically process multi-network debit (MND) contactless transactions to the least-cost payment network, with the potential to cut costs for small to medium enterprises (SMEs).
Tyro claims merchants will save on average 6 per cent on their Merchant Services Fees (MSF) and the majority of Tyro merchants will save between 20-30 per cent on re-routed transactions. Savings will vary between merchants depending on a business’ card mix, transaction volume and amount, industry, and pricing plan.
According to eftpos, debit cards represent almost 70 per cent of all card transactions in Australia, or around 5.6 billion transactions a year. Of that, around 70 per cent of all debit cards, or 26 million, are MND cards, featuring both eftpos and international schemes.
Bronwyn Yam, director of product at Tyro, said, “Our aim is to remove the barriers from business success and we are thrilled to give our customers the opportunity to be the first businesses in Australia to benefit from Tap & Save. As the first-mover in offering least-cost routing to merchants, it certainly gives our customers an advantage.
“Tap & Save has the potential to provide Tyro merchants with some relief from the expense of doing business. We constantly look at how we can make banking and payments easier and more cost effective for merchants. Tyro’s commitment to delivering value to customers with Tap & Save even comes at the expense of our own bottom line.”
Tyro’s recently appointed CEO, Robbie Cooke, said he was looking forward to stepping into his new role and leading the Tyro team as it paves the way in the Australian business banking and payments space.
“I am excited to see Tyro take the lead once again by bringing least-cost routing to the Australian market before all the other banks. Tap & Save is the perfect example of how Tyro is responding to the banking needs of SMEs,” he said.
The use of cash continues to decline and more Australian consumers are now in the habit of tapping their card when paying for purchases. During a typical week, consumers of all ages are using contactless cards more frequently than ever before.
In fact, the Reserve Bank’s fourth triennial Consumer Payments Survey (CPS) revealed that over the three-year survey period to November 2016, contactless card payments had escalated three and a half times to represent two thirds of all in-person card payments.
Currently in Australia, almost all MND tap-and-go card payments revert to the international credit card schemes, instead of the eftpos network. While the outcome is the same for the cardholder, the credit card schemes typically charge the merchant more than eftpos. As of September 2017, the Reserve Bank shows the average total merchant fee for a debit contactless transaction was 0.26 per cent with eftpos and 0.58 per cent with the international credit card schemes.
The launch of Tap & Save represents Tyro’s first iteration of least-cost routing, with further enhancements to come in future months which are expected to deliver even more savings to a larger proportion of its customer base.
This story was originally published by Appliance Retailer with additional reporting by RetailBiz.
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