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With a renewed emphasis on retail merchants, Lightspeed Commerce Inc. is launching a tool to help retailers data and inventory forecasting. In related news, point-of-sale terminal maker Ingenico says its SoftPOS software development kit achieved a PCI Security Standards Council certification.
Montreal-based Lightspeed announced the its four-part plan to boost the POS system maker’s fortunes that includes making it more attractive to North America retailers. The debut of the Seasonality Forecasting service is among the first public work on that front.
Lightspeed says the service can help retailers get more accurate order recommendations that consider seasonal events, such as holiday, annual celebrations, sporting events, even seasonal temperature changes.
“Merchants in key verticals like Sporting & Outdoor Goods and Home & Garden can now make smarter purchasing decisions, ensuring they have the right products at the right time,” Dax Dasilva, Lightspeed founder and chief executive, says in a statement.
Seasonality Forecasting is available within the Lightspeed POS system and requires no integration or manual data analysis, Lightspeed says. The company also is making it easier for retailers to view sales trends with its new Sales Visualization service. This provides users with a graphical view of sales trends.
Its NuOrder platform, which Lightspeed acquired in 2021, also has been updated to give retail buyers better data on top-selling products, categories, sizes, and colors, and is available to all U.S.-based NuOrder clients.
Meanwhile, Ingenico’s news that its SoftPOS (SDK) for Android is certified under the latest PCI Mobile Payments on COTS Standard v1.1 marks it as the first with the updated certification. Also known as MPoC, the certification is overseen by the PCI Security Standards Council. MPoC is a testing and approval program for payment technologies that use commercial off-the-shelf devices and an app to accept payments, rather than a dedicated POS terminal.
Ingenico says the latest specification allows for the use of secure card readers along with PIN-based secure card readers. Ingenico plans to launch this functionality later this year with support for both in all of its softPOS products.
“This high-performance reader can be easily attached to any smartphone, enabling merchants to offer mobile payment acceptance, including chip and pin, as a seamless extension of their existing setup,” Ingenico says.
