Lightspeed, a POS platform for retailers and restaurants, has secured a $61 million funding round co-led by Canadian investors Caisse de depot et placement du Quebec (CDPQ) and Investissement Quebec (IQ), alongside existing investors Accel Partners and iNovia Capital. This brings Lightspeed’s total funding to date to $126 million.
The financing will support the company’s global growth, technology infrastructure enhancements and deeper investment in its omnichannel offering.
The current valuation of the company is not being disclosed. Lightspeed currently processes approximately $10 billion a year in transactions from 25,000 customers across 100 countries, and has seen a 123% increase in total customer contract value during the past year. Customers average approximately $600,000 per year in revenue on the platform, typically across fewer than 10 physical locations but sometimes as many as 50.
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Since the start of 2015, Lightspeed has grown 745% year-over-year in Europe. The company attributes the growth to the company’s restaurant product launch, which has coincided with European payment processing regulations that require restaurants to upgrade their POS systems.
“We are investing heavily in scaling our platform to support our rapidly growing and increasingly global user base as well as developing offline transaction capabilities,” said Dax Dasilva, CEO and Founder of Lightspeed. “With omnichannel becoming increasingly important to our retailers and their customers, this funding will also further support the expansion and development of our e-Commerce offering.”
The expansion into e-Commerce is a longer-term ambition reflected by the growing presence of online POS systems.
“I think that the goal over the next couple of years is to prepare for the optionality of going public or getting even larger staying private,” Dasilva said in an interview with TechCrunch. “We are putting everything in place so that the company has lots of options.”