Hey monkey Duffy,
I do not have a position in LSPD, but responding based on what I know about the industry (not a SME but work in fintech). Square is an integrated service provider (they provide the software and hardware). Initially they focused on the hardware (remember the dongles that attached to the phone) - over the years they expanded into software to support the business on their payments platform. The approach square took was to gain payments marketshare and then start providing software to support the businesses.
LSPD on the other instance initially started as a software to support retail Point of sale (and other industries) and over time has added integrated payments into their application. Now, they don’t own the payments ecosystem rather integrate with a 3rd party payment processor or payfac and is white labeled as Lightspeed payments. The terms of service will indicate who they use but in my 5 minutes of google search, I wasn’t able to determine who their payment provider was. Whitelabeled payments by software vendors is a particular area of focus for payment processors and payment facilitators (referred to payfacs). In term of the physical hardware where you swipe your card is often by another 3rd party company that has integrated with the payment processor or payfac. Most common hardware vendors are verifone and ingenico.
Neverstoplearn
Long SQ (1% holding)