Shopify is launching new point-of-sale hardware across Canada, part of its efforts to bolster services for brick-and-mortar merchants as e-commerce growth slows down and the company looks for new sources of revenue.
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Shopify is launching new point-of-sale hardware across Canada, part of its efforts to bolster services for brick-and-mortar merchants as e-commerce growth slows down and the company looks for new sources of revenue.
The Ottawa-based tech giant said Wednesday its updated system, dubbed POS Go, is now available to merchants in Canada after being introduced in the United States last fall.
Shopify said the rollout is part of its “long-term strategy for powering commerce across all surfaces, from online to offline.” The new system will include a French translation option aimed at merchants in Quebec.
In a statement, the company said POS Go allows retailers in Canada and the U.S. to “unify their offline selling experience across markets and maintain full control of their business from a handheld device – from accessing real-time sales information, to monitoring how the business is operating, to seeing a full picture of a consumer’s shopping journey so they can deliver on-the-spot personalized experiences on the sales floor.”
By introducing POS Go in Canada, Shopify appears to be banking on the technology to help drive sales growth for merchants here the same way it has south of the border as the online shopping boom that propelled the company to record revenues earlier in the pandemic has cooled off.
The company says the total value of transactions made at brick-and-mortar retailers in the U.S. grew 31 per cent in the first quarter compared with a year earlier.
The mobile point-of-sale unit is equipped with a built-in barcode scanner that lets merchants check out items anywhere in the store. Debit and credit cards can be swiped, tapped or inserted into the device.
In addition, the system provides retailers with detailed production information as well as data on customers and their past purchases.
Merchants can also access up-to-the minute sales and inventory figures and other analytics across all Shopify channels via the WiFi-connected machine, which is similar to technology from competitors such as Square and Lightspeed Commerce.
The latest announcement comes less than a month after Shopify said it was laying off 20 per cent of its workforce and selling its logistics business in a bid to streamline its operations and return to its core focus of making e-commerce easier for merchants.
Shopify has also made a number of other moves designed to boost productivity and shore up its bottom line after the firm’s stock plummeted nearly 80 per cent year-over-year in 2022.
In recent months, the company reduced the number of meetings staff have, split workers into two career tracks – managers and crafters – with equivalent compensation levels and gave employees a “total rewards wallet” last year that allows them to choose between cash and stock options for their compensation.
The markets have reacted favourably to the changes. Since the beginning of 2023, Shopify’s stock price has risen more than 65 per cent on the Toronto Stock Exchange, where its shares finished Wednesday's trading at more than $80.
