(23 October 2020 – Australia) Bendigo Bank has announced a new partnership with Tyro Payments for it to become the Bank’s exclusive merchant acquiring partner for its business banking customers.
The announcement comes as The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) increased Bendigo and Adelaide Bank’s minimum liquidity requirement for failing to comply with APRA’s authorised deposit-taking institution (ADI) prudential standard on liquidity. The breaches of APS 210 – Liquidity are historical in nature, and Bendigo and Adelaide Bank’s current liquidity position is comfortably above APRA’s minimum regulatory requirements. The material breaches do not impact the overall soundness of Bendigo and Adelaide Bank’s current liquidity position.
The new agreement with Tyro will support the Bank's strategy of investing in capability and reducing complexity by providing more flexible, feature-rich payment solutions to business customers. The Bank's existing merchant acquiring services are currently delivered through a range of third parties who provide various hardware and software components for its product. However, this new partnership will reduce the number of partners from seven to one.
Under the agreement, a new co-brand has been developed – Bendigo Bank EFTPOS/eCommerce powered by Tyro – to allow the Bank to offer Tyro's full suite of products to its business customers, grow its capability and improve the overall customer experience. The new Bendigo Bank EFTPOS/eCommerce powered by Tyro offering is expected to be deployed to Bendigo Bank merchants from H1 2021.
“The partnership with Tyro and development of a new co-brand is a positive development for our business banking customers. In line with our group strategy to invest in capability and reduce complexity, we are reshaping our Merchant Services offering to help customers better run their businesses and further improve the market-leading customer experience we provide” said Bendigo Bank Executive Business Banking, Bruce Speirs.
“Our new partnership with Tyro is an exciting development and I look forward to working with the new team to simplify our product offering and provide enhanced capability which will allow the Bank to further improve the support for our business banking customers,” Mr Speirs added.
“The announcement is an exciting combination of Australia’s fifth biggest retail bank with the fifth largest merchant acquiring bank. Partnering with Bendigo Bank will see Tyro's leading proprietary payments platform made available to its current and future merchant customers – giving them access to more features, more payment options and seamless integrations to more than 300 point of sale systems” said Tyro CEO and Managing Director, Robbie Cooke.
“Tyro will deploy its payments expertise to Bendigo Bank’s business customers, with Bendigo Bank continuing to provide all other banking services to these customers under a long-term, collaborative and strategic partnering commitment. This is a great example of two customer focused Australian organisations coming together to provide better solutions for Australian businesses through a partnering of capability and expertise” Mr Cooke added.
“APRA’s liquidity requirements are designed to ensure financial institutions have sufficient resilience to withstand an acute or longer-term stress scenario. Although Bendigo and Adelaide Bank’s breaches don’t impact the overall soundness of its liquidity position, APRA takes any breaches of its prudential requirements seriously. In taking these actions, our priority is to ensure the underlying causes of the compliance failures are properly identified and addressed. It also sends a message to the wider banking industry that such breaches of our prudential standards are not acceptable, and APRA will respond in a commensurate manner, including applying penalties where appropriate” stated APRA Deputy Chair John Lonsdale.