Shopify’s core business reports strength in second quarter

Shopify’s e-commerce sales reported strong numbers for the second quarter, tariff impact notwithstanding, as the Canadian tech giant remained laser focused on serving its merchants.

GMV, or gross merchandise volume, which tracks the total dollar amount of all sales flowing through Shopify’s platform, grew 31% YoY in Q2. Enterprise brands including Starbucks, Canada Goose, and Burton Snowboards migrated to Shopify this quarter.

Shopify’s international GMV for the most recent quarter was up 42% YoY on a constant-currency basis, driven largely by top-notch performance in Europe, putting it ahead of North America.

“This is the outcome of a clear strategy executed really well. Agility and ease of use are now prerequisites for any modern commerce company,” Shopify President Harley Finkelstein said on the company’s earnings call.

With shopping agents becoming the new normal, the e-commerce platform also added strong agentic AI upgrades for merchants. On Tuesday, Shopify dropped three tools: a Checkout Kit for embedding purchases directly in chats; Shopify Catalog for fast product searches across millions of stores; and Universal Cart for shopping anywhere with one unified cart.

“We’ve built a suite of products that make it easy for AI platforms to bring shopping to their agents from discovery to checkout, and our merchants are front and center,” Finkelstein said.

According to Mark William Lewis, founder at commerce agency Netalico, “[Shopify] merchants are doing really well. Their general strategy is working well of converting people from [rivals like] WordPress, Magento,” Lewis told Retail Brew. “All ships rise when GMV goes up and it’s not even Q3, it’s not Black Friday.” He added that these numbers also bode well for the next quarter.

On Shopify’s Europe performance, Lewis said, the e-commerce platform has finally cracked how to get into this huge untapped market from a people and cultural perspective at a time when the US market is saturating for the company. “Europe has a lot of merchants that are still on older platforms,” he said.

On AI, Lewis said, Shopify is “taking control of the experience that AI agents should have around commerce when shopping on Shopify, as opposed to letting the agents do what they want.”