Tyro Appoints ING Executive as Director of Sales

Australia’s leading independent payments provider, Tyro Payments, today announced the appointment of Joshua Walther as the Company’s Director of Sales to replace departing co-founder, Andrew Rothwell.

Mr Walther was lured from ING Direct to join Tyro as it embarks on a stage of significant growth.

He has more than 18 years’ experience in financial services and management consulting with ING Direct, Aussie Home Loans, KPMG Consulting and Arthur Anderson Business Consulting.

Tyro CEO Gerd Schenkel said he was delighted to strengthen Tyro’s leadership team with someone of Mr Walther’s proven capability in driving sales and distribution performance.

“Joshua has extensive experience delivering sales growth for financial services businesses across multiple distribution formats including direct, digital & third party,” Mr Schenkel said.

“His background in strategy development and customer experience make him the ideal appointment to support our short and long term growth agenda, to provide fast, easy and integrated banking for Australia’s 1.2 million small and medium sized businesses.”

During his eight years at ING Direct, Mr Walther held senior roles growing and developing consumer sales and service channels.

Most recently, as Head of Direct Distribution, he was named Australian Customer Experience Executive of the Year 2015 by the Customer Service Institute of Australia.

In 2014, his ING Direct team was awarded Best Contact Centre in Australia.

Mr Walther is the fourth senior Tyro appointment to join from established financial institutions in the last eight months.

In October 2016, former Telstra Digital Executive Director and UBank founder Gerd Schenkel was appointed Chief Executive Officer.

He was joined by a new Head of Product, Kareem Al-Bassam, and a new Head of Brand & Marketing, Natalie Dinsdale, in January.

Mr Al-Bassam is a former PayPal executive, who founded PayPal Credit in Australia, with the launch of a new lending product for small and medium sized businesses, called PayPal Working Capital. In its first two years of operation, PayPal Working Capital originated more than $100 million in loans in Australia.

Ms Dinsdale has more than 17 years’ experience as an entrepreneur and marketer across a range of Australian and UK financial services challenger organisations, including Egg (UK’s 1st Online Bank), Virgin Money, UBank and Bankwest.

The four appointments have significantly strengthened Tyro’s management team, and have been driven by the organisation’s extraordinary success.

Tyro’s growth and achievements since it was established in 2003 have been remarkable. Currently serving more than 18,000 businesses, Tyro processed $8.6 billion in transactions and generated more than $95 million in revenue in FY16.

On 19 August 2015, Tyro was granted an unrestricted bank licence, allowing it to offer deposit and loan products alongside its EFTPOS product.

In December 2015, Tyro raised about $100 million in fresh growth equity capital from Tiger Global in New York, TDM Asset Management in Australia, and Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes. It was believed to have been the largest private equity capital raise for a fintech business in Australian history, valuing the business at more than half a billion dollars.

These developments have allowed Tyro to embark on a significant recruitment drive over the last 12 months, attracting some of the country’s most talented software engineers, payments specialists and digital experts.

About Joshua Walther

• Delivered sales, channel & service strategies for organisations across financial services, hospitality, media, telco, consumer electronics and manufacturing industries.
• Part of the team that drove Aussie Home Loan’s diversification into consumer lending with the launch of new credit card and personal lending products.
• During his eight years at ING DIRECT, Joshua held leadership roles in Distribution, Digital, and Strategy.
• Most recently as Head of Direct Distribution, ING Direct, Joshua was responsible for all direct to consumer sales and service channels, including inbound and outbound contact centres, digital & direct mortgage sales, customer service & complaints.
• He led the team that won the Best Contact Centre in Australia (2014) and was recognized as Australian Customer Experience Executive of the Year (2015).

About Tyro

Tyro is Australia’s only independent EFTPOS banking institution and is the first new entrant into the banking business in more than 18 years. Tyro holds an authority under the Banking Act to carry on a banking business as an Australian Deposit Taking Institution (ADI) and operates under the supervision of the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA). Tyro provides credit, debit, EFTPOS card acquiring, Medicare and private health fund claiming and rebating services as well as a transaction and deposit account integrated with Xero cloud accounting. Tyro takes money on deposit and offers unsecured cash-flow based lending to Australian EFTPOS merchants.

Need to know more?

For more about this news story please contact:
Monica Appleby, Head of Corporate Communications on 0466 598 946 or mappleby@tyro.com
Sophie Cotterill, Corporate Communications Manager on 0414 960 292 or scotterill@tyro.com