Takeover target Tyro Payments faces class action

Tyro Payments, the payments solutions business now the target of a $658m takeover bid from Potentia Capital, faces a renewed campaign against it from Bannister Law.

Tyro Payments faces a renewed campaign against it from Bannister Law, which has written to customers urging them to join a class ­action.

Tyro Payments, the payments solutions business now the target of a $658m takeover bid from Potentia Capital, faces a renewed campaign against it from Bannister Law, which has written to customers urging them to join a class ­action.

In emails sent to Tyro vendors on Friday, Bannister solicits for potentially affected customers to join the proceedings in the Federal Court, writing: “We have reason to believe your product and service offering has the capacity to integrate with Tyro EFTPOS terminals, an therefore, some of your customers may have experienced the outage.”

Noting a “very significant development” in the action, the lawyers say those customers who have not registered with the Federal Court by the end of October could forfeit their right to receive compensation should Tyro settle with the law firm. Bannister is acting on behalf of Spozac Pty Limited over an eftpos outage in January 2021. That left thousands of businesses unable to take credit card payments.

Tyro has separately contacted merchants that were affected by the outage, and previously said they would be given the opportunity to claim financial losses.

Court documents show that Tyro believes any merchant who has settled with it through that program should not be entitled to seek compensation through the Bannister-led class action.

Tyro is the country’s largest eftpos provider after the major banks, and has been badly affected by the pandemic when lockdowns crimped the number of transactions put through its services.

Potentia and its backers HarbourVest, Cbus and MLC have offered $1.27 per share, a 30 per cent premium to the company’s closing price before the bid.

Atlassian founder Mike Cannon-Brookes is an investor and is prepared to sell his 12.5 per cent stake if there isn’t a higher bid.

However, Tyro said in an ASX statement last week that the bid was “materially below Tyro’s fundamental value and highly opportunistic”. It rejected the offer.

“We thought the chance of a takeover offer from private equity was possible but modest, noting the recent resignation of CEO Robbie Cooke likely did increase the odds,” wrote UBS analyst Tim Piper in a note last week. An offer should be 25c per share higher, he added, “however we are of the view that (Tyro) may be appealing to a strategic buyer”.