Earlier today, Shopify experienced a major outage that disrupted the operations of numerous merchants, leaving them unable to fulfill transactions. According to Shopify’s status page, the company has since found and fixed the issue.
This disruption was particularly problematic as it occurred while customers were actively searching for deals on Cyber Monday, one of the busiest online shopping days of the year. Shopify is one of the most popular e-commerce platforms, used by millions of businesses to build and manage online stores. The company reports that Shopify merchants handle over ten percent of all e-commerce transactions in the United States.
The issues began surfacing around 6:45 a.m. PT, when select merchants reported difficulties logging into their Shopify accounts. Many also faced challenges accessing their point-of-sale systems, which prevented them from processing transactions.
Shopify’s status page recently confirmed that the company identified and remedied the cause of the problem, which was related to its login authentication flow. This explains the complications with point-of-sale logins. Shopify stated that it is now seeing signs of recovery and will continue monitoring the situation. The company also advised merchants that its Help Center was experiencing longer-than-normal wait times for support as a result of the outage.
The exact number of affected merchants remains unclear. However, a website that tracks user-submitted reports about website issues noted there were approximately four thousand outage incidents related to Shopify.