Shopify Payments Success: Speed, Chargebacks, Dispute Resolution

The company highlights greater conversion rates and nearly double the standard rate of successful dispute resolutions as driving factors of Shop Pay.

Need to Know

  • Shopify has released an extensive data report on the efficiency of its Shop Pay system for merchants.
  • Among the highlights: Shopify claims conversions with Payment are 1.56 times more likely on desktop, and 1.91 more likely on mobile, than for non-Payment merchants.
  • Shopify also highlights its ability to help merchants win more customer disputes with its Automatic Dispute Resolution tool—up to nearly double the amount of non-Shop Pay users.

Analysis

Shopify has published a blog post taking a deep-dive into some of its merchant tools, in an effort to illustrate why it is a better choice for sellers than some of its competitors.

In the blog post, Shopify looks at three key areas of its merchant-facing business: speed (and how this affects conversion rates), chargebacks, and dispute resolution, and Shopify’s advantage over cost-plus payment processors. The post, which was written by Shopify VP Kaz Nejatian aims to send home the message to merchants that “when you use anyone other than Shopify Payments, you are giving up dollars in order to chase cents.”

“We are the most aligned with you of any business partners and any payment processors you will ever see,” Nejatian writes. “So, of course, you’re going to get vastly better business results when you use us. It’s in our interest too.”

Among the Shopify advantages highlighted by the blog post is the difference in conversion rate with merchants using Shop Pay versus those who don’t. According to the blog post, Shop Pay users see a conversion rate that’s 1.56 times higher on desktop, and 1.91 higher on mobile, than non-Shopify-using merchants. Nejatian writes that this is because Shop Pay is thoughtfully designed to prioritize ease of use and, more importantly, speed: “It is fast, and fast means sales: over 50% more conversion of those sales, in fact,” he writes, noting too that, when Shopify Payments experiences a performance issue or outage, “there are teams of dozens … of engineers who immediately get to work to figure out what happens.”

One key element of the blog post is the detailed explanation of how Shopify helps merchants avoid chargebacks and win disputes using the payment processor’s Automatic Dispute Resolution tool. According to Nejatian, Shopify’s Automatic Dispute Response, “done by combining Shopify Payments and Shopify Shipping, will boost [merchants’] win rate from a 20% baseline to a 37% win rate: 17% of disputes flipping from a loss to a win.” This is significant, as it marks a near-doubling of the win rate of merchants who use Shopify vs. those who don’t.

Shopify also emphasizes its bottom-line benefit over so-called cost-plus payments processors that charge merchant account fees, gateway fees, and other costs every month.

“Shopify Payments will not do this; we will charge you exactly what you think we’re charging you, and nothing more, because we’re fully aligned with you,” Nejatian writes.

The Canadian e-commerce platform has been investing a lot in its payments platforms, recently launching Shopify Balance to bring cash flow tracking to merchants as well as debuting a new POS system geared towards a quicker post-COVID recovery.

Shopify has also posted exceptional growth in 2020 as digital commerce overall spiked due to the pandemic. In Q2, the company reported that new stores created on the Shopify platform grew 71% compared to the previous quarter. Total revenue for the quarter was $714.3 million, a 97% increase year-over-year.