Shopify is a Canadian publicly listed eCommerce and commerce platform (NYSE/TSX: SHOP) that serves approximately 1.89 million active merchants globally. Its 2024 revenue was 1 trillion milestone. Q1 2025 GMV was $74.75 billion (+23% YoY), demonstrating sustained double-digit growth across an already large base.
Shop Pay is Shopify’s native accelerated checkout product and is the primary vehicle through which Shopify competes directly with PayPal Branded Checkout at the checkout layer. Shop Pay processed 64% of Shopify GMV in Q1 2025 (up from 60% in Q1 2024), representing a deepening attachment rate to Shopify’s own payment rails. Shopify Payments — the broader payments product of which Shop Pay is the accelerated checkout component — holds approximately 15% of the payment-processing software market as of 2024, making Shopify a significant processor in its own right.
The strategic threat Shopify poses to PayPal Holdings is most visible in the SMB segment. PayPal’s SMB-attributable TPV declined from 235 billion in 2024, while Shopify’s GMV grew from 292 billion (+48%) over the same period. This strongly suggests that a meaningful portion of SMB commerce migration has gone directly to Shopify’s native commerce stack rather than being captured by PayPal-branded solutions.
Ontology
Shopify OWNS Shop Pay Shopify COMPETES_WITH PayPal Holdings // SMB commerce platform Shopify COMPETES_WITH Stripe // merchant platform and payment processing
Connections
- Shop Pay — accelerated checkout product; direct competitor to PayPal Branded Checkout at SMB level
- PayPal Holdings — lost SMB commerce volume to Shopify’s native commerce stack
- Stripe — overlapping merchant platform and processing competitor