Shopify Pressures Merchants to Ditch Buy With Prime

Shopify does not want its merchants utilizing Amazon’s Buy with Prime, warning that installing it will cut out Shopify’s ability to protect against fraud.

This could lead to stolen customer data. Shopify merchants have been using Buy with Prime since June, and merchants have been testing it since June. The service allows websites to add an instant button to their sites to let them buy things quickly through Amazon Prime.

The merchants can sign up for Buy with Prime and then Amazon generates an HTML button code that they need to add to the product template.

Shopify’s warning, popping up when they try to add Buy with Prime, tells merchants that the code comes with an “unsupported external checkout script,” and the company says it’s not responsible for anything that happens because of that.

“You have a code snippet on your storefront that violates Shopify’s Terms of Service. This script removes Shopify’s ability to protect your store against fraudulent orders, could steal customer data and may cause customers to be charged the wrong amount,” reads the message to merchants.

The Shopify Terms of Service say the checkout has to happen through Shopify and that the businesses “agree not to work around, bypass, or circumvent any of the technical limitations of the Services, including to process orders outside Shopify’s Checkout.”

An Amazon spokesperson said in response to the accusations, “We developed Buy with Prime to serve Prime members wherever they shop and empower merchants of all sizes wherever they choose to sell. We hope that all ecommerce providers will put customer experience and merchants’ success first by allowing them to take advantage of more tools.”

According to the Amazon spokesperson, Amazon Pay, which is backed by the fraud protection technology used on Amazon.com, is used to process payments for Buy With Prime orders. Merchants have complete control over the prices customers are charged.

Amazon maintains that it protects information collected via Buy with Prime, including shopper data, in accordance with its high security standards and uses this information to provide and improve Buy with Prime for merchants and shoppers.

Shopify could take bolder steps in the future, as it wants Shop Pay to be the default. Shopify has said it’s trying to “arm the rebels” against Amazon’s “empire.”

Amazon’s method to implement Buy with Prime allowed it to support all platforms, and also not have to ask for permission from them, the report noted.

In August, PYMNTS wrote that Shopify has seen a decline in businesses using its services, due to outside forces like high costs and a lack of customer spending these days.

Read more: Shopify Sees Merchant Exodus Amid Decline in Consumer Spending

Shopify added 71,000 net merchants in the first part of the year, a decline from the 680,000 it added during the peak height of the pandemic in 2020, and 314,000 in 2021.