KOUNTA by Lightspeed POS — bank compatibility

KOUNTA by Lightspeed is a point-of-sale system for hospitality and retail. Sydney-built, backed by MYOB early on, and sold to Canada's Lightspeed in 2019 for US$35.3 million.

Certified on mx51, which is the engine behind several banks’ own terminal offerings rather than something a merchant buys by name.

Certified for tipping.

The mx51 integration uses SPI JavaScript and was last certified in January 2019, on Browser and iOS.

Kounta was founded in Sydney in 2012 by Nick Cloete and became one of the better-known Australian cloud POS stories — cafes, bars and restaurants running the till in a browser rather than on a locked-down Windows box. MYOB made an undisclosed investment in 2014, which tells you how seriously the local accounting incumbent took it.

In October 2019 Lightspeed, the Montreal commerce platform, bought it for US$35.3 million. The stated reason was Asia-Pacific reach: Lightspeed wanted a foothold in the region and Kounta came with the customer base and the local team. Lightspeed listed on the NYSE not long after, which is how a Sydney startup ended up as a line item in a North American public company's hospitality division.

What that means practically is that the Kounta name has been progressively folded into Lightspeed's own restaurant products. If you are still running Kounta, you are running software whose roadmap is set in Montreal, and the integration list is Lightspeed's list. Worth checking what your current version actually supports before you choose a terminal.