Who owns Lightspeed, and what its numbers say before you sign

What did Lightspeed buy, and what did it pay?

Most of what you would recognise as Lightspeed was built by somebody else. The consideration figures below come from the business combinations notes in the company's own audited financial statements.

Gastrofix, the Berlin hospitality POS that became the backbone of Lightspeed's German and Austrian restaurant business, is the odd one out. It appears in the fiscal 2021 statements only as Lightspeed POS Germany GmbH, formerly Gastrofix GmbH. The purchase price was not stated in the annual filings we read, so we do not quote one. Kounta in Australia and ChronoGolf are listed as subsidiaries with no consideration detail in those notes either.

Why this matters to you: when you buy Lightspeed Restaurant in Europe you are often buying the descendant of a German product, sold by a Canadian company, with its payment leg run through a Dutch entity. Every one of those seams is a place where a feature can be delayed or a migration can be announced.

Why does Lightspeed push payments so hard?

Because that is where the growth is, and the filings say so plainly. Between fiscal 2025 and fiscal 2026, gross transaction volume rose 7 percent to 98.1 billion dollars while gross payment volume, the part Lightspeed itself processes, rose 21 percent to 41.0 billion. Average revenue per customer location went from about 545 to about 602 dollars a month, a 10 percent rise, while subscription revenue grew only about 8 percent. The extra money is coming from the card rail, not from licences.

The Capital Markets Day release of 26 March 2025 put a number on the ambition: roughly 15 to 18 percent compound growth in consolidated gross profit to about 700 million dollars by fiscal 2028, adjusted EBITDA at roughly 20 percent of gross profit by then, and about 100 million dollars of free cash flow. Those targets are not reachable on software prices alone, which is the honest reason your account manager will keep asking about your card terminals.

What does that mean for a merchant's effective cost?

Do the arithmetic on the filed numbers. 815.1 million dollars of transaction revenue on 41.0 billion dollars of processed volume is an average take of about 1.99 percent of every euro, dollar or pound that goes through Lightspeed Payments. That is a blended figure across cards, countries and merchant sizes, not a quote, but it is the number the company actually earns.

Now compare it with the software. In Belgium, Lightspeed Restaurant lists Basic at 89 euro a month for one register licence, Core at 159 euro for two and Pro at 249 euro for three, with extra licences at 49 euro each. A restaurant doing 40,000 euro a month on card pays roughly 800 euro in processing at a 2 percent blended rate. The software is the rounding error. Anyone comparing POS systems on the monthly licence alone is comparing the wrong number, which is the point we make in /en/best/best-restaurant-pos-benelux-2026 and in the feature-level view at /en/software/lightspeed-restaurant.

One practical warning. Lightspeed does not publish a European card rate. The Belgian pricing page lists the software tiers in euro and says rates are available on request for Core and Pro. Get that rate in writing, with the interchange treatment spelled out, before you sign anything.

What happened the last time Lightspeed changed course?

It sold a product its customers were using. On 28 April 2026 Lightspeed sold the holding company behind Upserve, the American restaurant platform it had bought in December 2020 for about 411 million dollars, to Skyview Equity. Its own annual information form describes the sale as consistent with a strategy of streamlining the portfolio to concentrate on two core growth engines, retail customers in North America and hospitality customers in Europe.

That strategy was announced in March 2025. The same release noted that e-commerce sites were excluded from the customer location target because the company now prioritises what it calls physical-first. Read as a merchant, that is a statement about which products get engineering attention and which do not.

The reorganisation is ongoing. The fiscal 2026 management discussion describes a reorganisation to streamline the operating model, and the Q2 fiscal 2027 release of 5 November 2026 refers to cost reduction initiatives as part of a planned three-year transformation.

Is Lightspeed growing or shrinking?

Growing on revenue, still unprofitable, and much closer to break-even than it was. Fiscal 2026 revenue was 1,227.0 million dollars against 1,076.8 million the year before, up 14 percent. Gross profit was 526.9 million at a 42.9 percent margin. The net loss narrowed to 144.4 million dollars from 667.2 million, and adjusted EBITDA was 72.5 million against 53.7 million.

The most recent quarter, the three months to 30 September 2026, showed 323.8 million dollars of revenue, 142.8 million of gross profit, a net loss of 4.2 million and 22.7 million of adjusted EBITDA, with about 146,000 customer locations in total and about 99,000 in the two growth engines. Guidance for fiscal 2027 is 1,225 to 1,265 million dollars of revenue. Dax Dasilva, the founder, is back as chief executive.

What this means if you are about to sign

Three things, and none of them are reasons to avoid Lightspeed.

First, negotiate the card rate, not the licence. It is where the money is, for both of you.

Second, assume the product you buy may be reorganised around you. Lightspeed has bought six platforms and sold one. If your workflow depends on a module that is not core to North American retail or European hospitality, ask for a written roadmap commitment.

Third, read your exit before your entry. Export your product catalogue, your customer list and your sales history on day one and check that you can do it again on demand. A company that prices on payment volume has no commercial reason to make leaving easy. A head-to-head on the hospitality side, including what a German-built product does well, is at /en/compare/lightspeed-vs-orderbird.