Paymark almost trebles dividend to bank owners

Tuesday 16th August 2016

Paymark, the eftpos terminal provider owned by New Zealand's four major banks, increased its dividend by 56 percent to $9.4 million from $6 million a year earlier.

The company is owned by ANZ Bank New Zealand, ASB Bank, BNZ Investments and Westpac NZ. In February of this year, the shareholding banks appointed Cameron Partners to conduct a strategic review of the business after receiving approaches about their shares.

Revenue rose 30.5 percent to $68.45 million from $52.42 million the previous year. Profit after tax was $19.52 million, an increase of 62 percent from the $12.04 million a year earlier. Although there is little in the accounts to indicate where the revenue increase came from, operating revenue from the four major banks rose to $34.08 million from $18.9 million a year earlier, an increase of 79.8 percent.

A further dividend of $7.3 million was paid on June 2 and will appear in the next year's financial accounts.

Retail NZ said it was concerned about the scale of fees being charged to retailers by the banks and card companies "merchant services fees are substantially higher in New Zealand than they are in Australia and the UK, and there's no clear reason for this." The trade body's general manager, public affairs, Greg Harford added that "the high costs of payments in New Zealand are spread across all consumers, and this is part of the reason that some goods are more expensive in New Zealand."

Paymark has more than 75 percent of the market for electronic point of sale terminals. In 2015 it processed more than 1.2 billion transactions with a value of more than $60 billion. There are 140,000 terminals in New Zealand, with 80,000 merchants using them.

Paymark declined to comment.

BusinessDesk.co.nz

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