Our Company

Revel Systems is an award-winning iPad Point of Sale Solution for single location and multi-location businesses. The company was founded in 2010 in San Francisco, with the goal of changing the Point of Sale market. Founders Lisa Falzone and Chris Ciabarra developed a quick, intuitive and secure iOS-based Point of Sale system by combining cloud-based technology and the mobility of the iPad. Revel tailors every Point of Sale to each businesses’ specific needs and wants through a suite of features, including integrated payroll, inventory tracking, customer relationship management and much more. With the introduction of the Revel Marketplace, Revel iPad POS users can now integrate directly into third-party enhancements, including mobile payments, online ordering, gift or reward cards and advanced financial software suites. The Revel team is continuously expanding its presence as a world class leader in iPad POS solutions. Our headquarters are based in San Francisco, where our esteemed group of leaders have put together a team of individuals from all across the globe. Starting with a foundation based in leadership, Revel has created a group of the best qualified staff in the business. Revel started out with a completely different idea: an online ordering app for the iPhone. Co-founders Chris and Lisa hit the streets of Sausalito to sell their newly-minted product. While selling their online ordering app to local restaurants, however, the two founders realized that the bigger challenge and problem in the restaurant space was the point of sale system. The POS systems at restaurants that they visited were bulky, archaic, and expensive, not to mention their back support and lack of open api. Many of these systems had not been updated in years, and had servers on the backend which required frequent and costly maintenance. Restaurant owners, by and large, are not always the most tech-oriented, and having a bulky and high-maintenance backoffice server was a recipe for disaster. Lack of technical expertise paired with POS systems requiring frequent repairs or replacements drove up restaurant owners’ costs. After talking to Michael Lappert, owner of Lappert’s Fish and Chips in Sausalito, Chris and Lisa decided to pivot and develop a new type of POS system. The recently released iPad was the perfect touch screen to replace this archaic expensive legacy system. Because the first iPad had just been released, it was the most logical choice for the POS platform of the future. Their next task was to connect a card swipe through the 30 pin connector to the iPad, while simultaneously powering the device. Everyone from whom Chris and Lisa sought advice told them it was impossible. The founders had a motto, however: Where there’s a will, there’s a way. Lisa and Chris started to search the Internet for how to connect a card swipe, because everyone else said it was impossible. After extensive research, they found a webpage on the Internet that detailed the pin layout in its entirety. Careful analysis revealed that the pin layout had power pins and serial input pins along with USB layouts. Creating a device, and getting it certified by Apple would take several months, and the dynamic duo had only one week before they left for India to start programming the app. This trip marked the beginning of this amazing adventure into POS technology. While brainstorming, Chris and Lisa found more issues: Apple requires an authentication chip for any hardware accessory to communicate to the iPad, and access to this authentication technology required membership in Apple’s MFi program . The MFi program was rigid and required compliance with a number of specific rules. They needed to get the hardware connectors and components required to manufacture iPad accessories, and they had to access the iPod Accessory protocol specification, which was the communication protocol used to interact with the iPad. Testing alone could take weeks, if not months. Creating and getting approval for a hardware product could take a minimum of 6 months, and the founders did not have time for that.