LightSpeed is an in-store retail platform trying to revolutionize the brick-and-mortar shopping experience through the use of Apple-based products. The company is taking another step towards becoming an attractive partner for merchants today, announcing integration with Merchant Warehouse, Moneris and uDynamo as part of its LightSpeed for iPad 1.4 upgrade.
How do the moves fit into LightSpeed’s larger strategy, and what does it say about the company’s target retail base? PYMNTS.com spoke with Dax Dasilva, founder and CEO at LightSpeed in this exclusive to learn more.
According to Dasilva, LightSpeed plays in three spaces: back-end retail management, in-store shopping experience and payments acceptance.
“What we’ve tried to do with this new release is we’ve tried to innovate on that side, and this all ties back into having great customer engagements and all of this stuff flowing through our back end as well.
LightSpeed spans a very broad spectrum, and there are different types of payments processing and different types of options that different segments of retailers need,” Dasilva explained. “So what we’ve tried to do is we’ve tried to partner with some of the best partners, so that LightSpeed has got the right payments options at all of these different levels.”
In the U.S., LightSpeed has made a push towards the wallet acceptance and consumer loyalty space by integrating with Merchant Warehouse’s Genius platform. The move allows for those using Google Wallet, LevelUp and other payment options in conjunction with payments terminals.
“As merchants probably realize, it’s hard to keep up with all the different types of payments options that are popping up on the market, and different wallet solutions, different loyalty programs,” he said. “What the Genius platform does is it lets the merchant implement the LightSpeed system for managing their store and engaging with their customers, and let’s the Genius platform take care of these new payments innovations as they come along on the terminal.”
According to Dasilva, store representatives can help make sales via LightSpeed’s iPad system, but can then throw the transaction process to a Genius terminal stationed elsewhere in the store.
“They don’t have to wait for us to integrate piece by piece these new offers,” Dasilva explained.
And what the Merchant Warehouse integration does for the U.S. is what the Moneris partnership does for Canada, according to Dasilva, but with some major differences: perhaps most notably, that the integration is the first of its kind for Macs and iPads. PYMNTS.com first broke the news that LightSpeed and Moneris had partnered for Mac integration back in April, but the integration is now live for the iPad as well.
“We’re bringing sort of the Apple Store dream of having all of these Apple-based tools connecting to the biggest payment processor in Canada,” he said, noting that acceptance of EMV and Chip & PIN payments is of more importance in Canada.
And finally, Dasilva highlighted LightSpeed’s integration with uDynamo as a way for smaller retailers to begin credit card processing via tablets. Dasilva said this option should become even more popular among retailers now, as the iPad mini is even more conducive to collecting in-store payments than its larger predecessors.
“To be completely honest the iPad mini is way more appealing to do this than the iPad just in terms of bulk,” he said. “If you’re a smaller store and you just sort of need a credit card swipe to go onto that iPad, uDynamo is a great choice.”
Overall, the three integrations represent a way for LightSpeed to appeal to merchants of varying sizes in the Canadian and U.S. markets, and build up to some enterprise partner announcement Dasilva teased for the future.
“We do a lot of thinking about how retailers are going to be running their stores in this modern age, in a very connected to the online world model, where eCommerce and in-store experience, all of these things are intermingled. And that’s what the LightSpeed platform is built to do, to kind of help retailers move into this modern age and have all of these systems in sync.”
To hear more Dasilva on LightSpeed’s recent news, listen to the full podcast below.
*If you have trouble with the audio player above, click here.
Dax Dasilva is the Founder and CEO of LightSpeed, the number-one fastest-growing company in Quebec, Canada. In 2005, he recognized a changing shift in consumer buying patterns and made it his mission to fuse innovation and technology to equip retailers with software tools for the Mac to change the shopping experience. The Internet made it easy for consumers to navigate through product selections and compare prices across the web. As a result, online shopping became more enticing than leaving the house to shop at a store. Dax, the mastermind behind LightSpeed’s success, is reversing the trend by giving store managers and sales staff the back-office support they need to close a deal on the fly. With LightSpeed, you can use Macs, iPads, and iPhones to showcase products, sell anywhere at any time, link multiple stores, check inventory, review sales/ordering workflows, and provide e-commerce integration.
Dax first set foot on this trailblazing path at just 13 years old, when he began apprenticing for an Apple developer. At 15, he created his first custom Mac-based software, for forestry companies and other businesses in his native Vancouver, Canada. Back then, Apple was a mere afterthought in the personal computer market, but Dax saw the potential and continued to develop software as a freelance consultant before landing a full-time gig at a Mac dealership in Montreal a decade ago. It was his first foray into retail applications, and he spent the next two years developing software to streamline the retail operations at the dealership’s four stores.
Dax took stock of what he had created, and the positive feedback it sparked from the employees who had used the system, then set out to create an elegant and adaptable suite of retail management tools that could be easily customized for a variety of retail environments. Fueled by endless cups of espresso, he spent another two years working day and night from his small Montreal studio, launching LightSpeed as Xsilva Systems in 2005.
Today, LightSpeed occupies a sleek 12,000 square-foot facility in Montreal’s Little Italy, where Dax oversees a staff of more than 90 employees, up from barebones operations of just four employees at its inception. While it’s clear his company is poised for yet more phenomenal growth, this technology innovator insists on maintaining LightSpeed’s entrepreneurial edge. In 2012, Dax was named Ernst & Young’s Quebec Entrepreneur of the Year for Information Technology.
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