The law firm behind a proposed class action against Tyro Payments (ASX: TYR) over its handling of a three-week terminal outage says the remediation offered by the fintech is "inadequate", renewing calls for a legal response.
In a statement today Bannister Law says Tyro's offer to impacted merchants, so far taken up by 3,656 customers, paves the way for a class action on behalf of affected businesses.
Bannister Law principal Charles Bannister alleges the alternative offered by the company is a long and protracted dispute resolution process, controlled by Tyro.
"We have spoken to one small business who estimated that the offer of rebates on merchant fees would result in her receiving just ten percent of the amount she has lost," says Bannister.
"The compensation is inadequate. In our view Tyro has prioritised minimising churn of its customers over actually providing them with adequate compensation and if customers opted for the dispute resolution process instead of taking the rebate compensation, the onus appears on the customer to substantiate their losses."
Any class action launched by the law firm would seek to compensate merchants for lost sales and goodwill.
"The outage happened at a terrible time. Customers were starting to return after a disastrous 2020 and a disappointing festive season where sales were well below previous years," adds Bannister.
"Tyro's failure was extensive. They did not communicate the extent of the issue or provide businesses with an accurate estimate as to when the service would be restored.
"Many businesses had customers return multiple times to make purchases and were unable to do so due to Tyro's terminal failure. Businesses deserve fair compensation."
Shares in TYR are down 2.05 per cent to $3.83 per share at 3.45pm AEST.
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