After the employees’ fraud had lasted more than a year, Shopify saw that new merchants going live on its platform failed to deliver the numbers projected by its sales team, and the company launched an internal investigation, The Logic reported Monday (Nov. 24), citing unnamed sources.
The gap between what the salespeople had promised and the sales that later materialized amounted to “at least tens of millions of dollars,” the report said.
The salespeople exploited a Shopify commission structure that was based on their projected annual sales of each merchant they brought to the platform, per the report.
Shopify did not immediately reply to PYMNTS’ request for comment.
The company’s head of external communications, Ben McConaghy, told The Logic that the issue involved a “single-digit number of salespeople.”
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“We immediately investigated, fired them, and strengthened our systems,” McConaghy said, per the report. “This had no impact on our financials and this issue is closed.”
Meanwhile, Shopify said in a Nov. 4 earning report that it processed about $29 billion of gross merchandise volume (GMV) in the third quarter, up 67% year over year, and that payments penetration reached 65% of GMV.
The company also said consumer demand remained resilient.
“Consumer confidence for us is measured at checkout,” Shopify President Harley Finkelstein said during an earnings call. “On Shopify, shoppers keep buying. They keep returning and demand remains really resilient across channels and in categories.”
PYMNTS reported Nov. 11 that the company’s lending arm, Shopify Capital, expanded in the third quarter. The company reported $1.73 billion in loans and merchant cash advances outstanding in the third quarter, up from $1.22 billion at the end of 2024. The 42% increase highlighted ongoing demand among merchants using Shopify’s payments and fulfillment tools.
The embedded nature of Shopify Capital, repaid as a percentage of daily sales, allows merchants to access money and repay it dynamically. The third quarter results revealed that 91.9% of the portfolio was current as of the end of the quarter, down from 93.7% at the end of last year.
