UBS Napa Recap "Innovation in SaaS & POS Payments (Fullsteam & Lavu)" Chiodo

Research evidence excerpt

UBS Napa Recap "Innovation in SaaS & POS Payments (Fullsteam & Lavu)" Chiodo

ore verticalized, up-market POS providers tailored to specific ella.zimmermann@ubs.com

+1-212-713 5000

industries such as Lavu and Toast. Within the restaurant vertical, Lavu viewed upmarket

competition as most intense. Specifically, Lavu has seen operators increasingly demand Holt Bashinsky

purpose built functionality such as profitability focused tooling and operational controls. Associate Analyst

To meet this demand, and in contrast to some horizontal platforms, vertical POS holt.bashinsky@ubs.com

+1-212-713 2833

providers such as Lavu are increasingly embedding features such as kitchen

management, payroll, and marketing tools, driving ARPU growth and higher retention Siddhanth Soni

through deeper workflow integration. Associate Analyst

siddhanth.soni@ubs.com

+1-212-649 8010

Strategy of embedding payments into vertical SaaS: Fullsteam outlined its scaled

roll-up model built by acquiring vertical SaaS platforms and integrating payments.

Fullsteam has acquired ~98 businesses across a broad set of verticals (e.g., hospitality,

field services, retail, health & wellness). Post acquisition, Fullsteam focuses on

embedding payments to improve platform economics, while simultaneously leveraging

portfolio level synergies (i.e., centralized marketing across different SaaS platforms,

better terms with processing partners). Fullsteam emphasized that its strategy of

targeting niche, workflow-specific SaaS provides a powerful mechanism to combine

vertical expertise with payment monetization, noting that tailoring software for specific

verticals can outperform horizontal solutions on adoption and retention. Further still,

Fullsteam noted that converting customers onto embedded payments meaningfully