Law firm gets ball rolling on Tyro class action

Shareholders were also impacted after Tyro’s share price fell from $3.34 on January 5, when outages first started being reported, to as low as $2.32 when the company was hit by a short-seller attack from Viceroy Research following the outages.

Viceroy’s report on Tyro claimed it was “the most unreliable and technologically inferior fintech in Australia”.

The class action is likely to be based on claims of alleged failure to provide services with due care and skill under the Australian Securities and Investments Commission Act, breached warranties and negligence.

Bannister Law is yet to receive a substantive response to the documents sent to Tyro and proceedings have not yet been filed.

Charles Bannister, principal at Bannister Law, said the law firm was working to quantifying losses from customers and shareholders who had registered for a class action and said anyone impacted should register.

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“The losses are not insignificant; they are substantial losses across a range of industries,” he said.

Tyro declined to comment on the potential proceedings.

Tyro this week emailed customers and offered to waive their terminal fees for January when many were not operational and to refund the postage of returning terminals to be fixed.

However, many Tyro customers want compensation for the money they lost from being unable to process payments.

“I’m still chasing 2k that wandered out the door due to no machine,” one customer posted on Tyro’s Facebook page. “How about I send you a bill for that?”

In its email to customers, Tyro said it was “focusing on addressing the concerns raised by our impacted customers” and “genuinely open to listening to and considering these”.

Tyro has received support from its largest shareholder, Atlassian billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes, who holds 63.3 million shares, or 12.5 per cent, of Tyro’s stock through his investment vehicle Grok Ventures.

Mr Cannon-Brookes has increased his shareholding since the short-seller attack on Tyro, but a spokesperson for him declined to comment further.

Tyro’s share price closed 6.2 per cent higher on Wednesday at $2.74.