Lightspeed acquires restaurant software company Upserve for $430M

Lightspeed POS just announced the acquisition of Upserve, expanding Lightspeed's presence in the restaurant industry.

The company already offers cloud-based point-of-sale software for restaurants and other businesses. It went public in Canada last year before recently debuting on the New York Stock Exchange and acquiring another point-of-sale company, ShopKeep, for $440 million.

The Upserve acquisition is similarly sized - Lightspeed will pay $123 million in cash, along with stock that will bring the total deal size to around $430 million.

Upserve was founded back in 2009 as Swipely, one of several startups encouraging users to share their purchase information with friends. It shifted its offerings to business tools around payments, marketing and loyalty, eventually rebranding as Upserve as it became increasingly focused on the restaurant market. It also raised funding from Vista Equity Partners.

According to the announcement, Upserve brought in $40 million in revenue during the 12-month period ending on September 30. The deal is also supposed to grow Lightspeed's footprint by 7,000 locations.

Combining forces with Upserve is a strategic next-step in Lightspeed's vision of providing the most advanced commerce platform to high-performing businesses around the world," said Lightspeed founder and CEO Dax Dasilva in a statement. We believe this acquisition will accelerate the product innovation that has enabled Lightspeed customers to tackle the greatest challenge to their industry in decades and will add exceptional leadership to our teams in anticipation of the economic recovery of the global hospitality industry."

The announcement also claims that the combination of Lightspeed and Upserve's teams and technologies will enable the industry to more easily navigate the new dining needs made permanent by the COVID-19 pandemic."

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