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Is Shopify a PayFac?

Last updated on October 1, 2022 @ 11:36 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. Lütke, a German citizen, originally came to Canada to work on developing Snowdevil, an online snowboarding equipment store that he started with some partners. Although Snowdevil was not successful, Lütke realized that the real value of his company was in its e-commerce platform.

In 2006, Lütke and his partners launched Shopify as a platform for other businesses similar to Snowdevil. Initially, Shopify was focused on providing an easy-to-use shopping cart for small businesses but has since expanded its services to include payments, marketing, shipping, and customer engagement tools.

PRO TIP: Shopify is not a PayFac. PayFacs are regulated by the card brands and must meet certain requirements in order to process card-not-present transactions. Shopify is a platform that allows you to create an online store. While you can use Shopify to sell products online, it is not a PayFac and will not allow you to process card-not-present transactions.

Shopify has been growing rapidly since its inception. It now has over 800,000 merchants using its platform and is processing over $40 billion in gross merchandise volume annually. The company has been profitable since 2015 and is publicly traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX:SHOP)(NYSE:SHOP).

Is Shopify a PayFac?

No, Shopify is not a payFac. A payFac is a Payment Facilitator as defined by Visa.

“A Payment Facilitator is a business entity that contracts with Visa to provide payment processing services to its merchants. ”

Conclusion: No, Shopify is not a payFac.

Madison Geldart

Madison Geldart

Cloud infrastructure engineer and tech mess solver.