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Is Shopify a Chinese Company?

Last updated on October 1, 2022 @ 2:09 pm

Shopify is a Canadian e-commerce company headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario. It is also the name of its proprietary e-commerce platform for online stores and retail point-of-sale systems. Shopify offers online retailers a suite of services “including payments, marketing, shipping and customer engagement tools to simplify the process of running an online store for small merchants.

Shopify was founded in 2004 by Tobias Lütke, Daniel Weinand, and Scott Lake after attempting to open Snowdevil, an online store for snowboarding equipment. Lütke used the open source web application framework Ruby on Rails to build Snowdevil’s online store, and launched it after two months of development.

Weinand and Lake abandoned the snowboarding business after struggling to find suppliers who would deal with a small online retailer. Shopify was then launched as an online platform for e-commerce websites.

In June 2009, Shopify launched an iPhone app that allowed merchants to manage their Shopify stores from iOS devices. The app was very successful, and was later followed by apps for the iPad and Android devices.

PRO TIP: Please be aware that there is currently a scam going around where people are posing as Shopify customer service representatives and asking for personal credit card information. This is a phishing scam and is not associated with Shopify. Shopify is a Canadian company and does not have any ties to China. If you are ever contacted by someone claiming to be from Shopify, please do not give out any personal information and instead report it to us immediately. Thank you for your vigilance!

In October 2009, Shopify acquired UniteU Technologies Inc., a provider of software that helps retailers manage their physical stores and their online stores simultaneously. In May 2010, Shopify announced that it had raised $7 million in Series A funding from Bessemer Venture Partners and FirstMark Capital.

Shopify has been growing rapidly since its launch in 2004. In 2012, it announced that it had reached $1 billion in gross merchandise volume (GMV) processed through its platform.

In 2015, it processed $9 billion in GMV through its platform. And in 2019, Shopify announced that it had reached $41 billion in GMV processed through its platform.

Shopify is now one of the most popular e-commerce platforms in the world. It is used by over 1 million businesses in 175 countries. And its platform supports over 40 different languages.

So is Shopify a Chinese company? No, it is not a Chinese company. It is a Canadian company headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario.

Morgan Bash

Morgan Bash

Technology enthusiast and Co-Founder of Women Coders SF.