Lightspeed POS is launching its payments product in the United Kingdom (UK) and Europe.
Lightspeed Payments will be rolled out to hospitality merchants in the UK, followed by retail and hospitality merchants throughout France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland. The solution is aimed to give businesses important functionalities, such as mobile and contactless payments.
“This launch empowers many of our global customers to generate faster, more secure transactions that give them richer data about their business.”
Though Lighstpeed’s e-commerce, point-of-sale, and analytics offerings are already available in the UK and Europe, Lightspeed Payments has, until now, only been available to businesses in the United States and Canada. The payments offering was made available in Canada last year after Lightspeed partnered with Stripe.
Prior to launching its payment offering in 2018, Lightspeed customers had to rely on a third-party payments provider to integrate with their Lightspeed products. The move into this payments space was a significant one for the Montréal-based company.
Since 2018, Lightspeed claims its customers have processed over $2.2 billion in payments across approximately 22.6 million transactions as of last quarter, with a new merchant attach rate of over 60 percent.
“This is a crucial time for the small and medium-sized businesses we serve and they need simplified solutions that save them time and money,” said Dax Dasilva, founder and CEO of Lightspeed. “This launch empowers many of our global customers to generate faster, more secure transactions that give them richer data about their business.”
Though already a global company, Lightspeed has made efforts in recent months to expand its market reach. The launch of Payments in the UK and Europe follows shortly after Lightspeed announced plans to acquire Vend, a retail management software company based in New Zealand, for approximately $350 million. At the time, Lightspeed noted the deal was intended to strengthen its global retail base, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region. Lightspeed currently has 115,000 customer locations around the world, according to its latest quarterly results.
In November, Lightspeed also acquired ShopKeep for $145.2 million in cash and the issuance of over 7 million subordinate voting shares. This all followed Lightspeed listing on the New York Stock Exchange, after closing an initial public offering at $397.7 million.
Lightspeed said the UK in particular is an underserved market when it comes to payments in the hospitality sector. A study Lightspeed conducted with London, England-based OnePoll, and over 300 small business owners, found that 94 percent said having integrated POS payments saves money and 79 percent believe it saves time.
A further 83 percent of these businesses are using mobile payments, and 78 percent manage their own finances. Nearly half (42 percent) said they need more overall support with financial management.
At the same time, the UK is known to be a competitive environment for FinTech startups and challenger banks. In 2016, the nation adopted open banking legislation, which allows users to share their banking data with third parties, requiring the nine largest UK banks to allow licensed startups direct access to data.
“The United Kingdom has historically seen rapid adoption of new payments solutions and we are excited to add new capabilities and flexibility to the businesses that are the backbone of that economy,” Dasilva said.
Image courtesy Lightspeed.