Shopify GMV near doubled over 2020
2020 was a strong year for Shopify. It reported an 86% increase in revenues to $2.9bn and almost double its Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV) at $119.6bn, with a significant proportion cross-border. Shopify, where sellers run their own branded sites, is an alternative platform to the big marketplaces for global sellers.
- Shopify has increased its share of the US retail ecommerce sales to 8.6% compared with Amazon’s 39%. At the end of 2019, their respective market shares were 5.9% and 37.3%.
- Q4 was particularly strong as a result of a greater share of retail spend going to online purchases, an extended Black Friday/Cyber Monday shopping season and higher GMV per merchant. On Black Friday, 14% of all orders were cross border, with the top 5 countries being Spain (29%), France (25%), Germany (18%), Italy (15%) and the UK (19%).
- The year-on-year GMV growth by international merchants (for which Shopify has not provided an exact number) outpaced the overall GMV growth (95.7%) as the international merchant base grew within the overall mix.
- Shopify ended the year with over 1.7m merchants under its belt (Amazon has 2.1m active merchants).
- In 2021, the company plans to invest in its fulfilment network, the shop app that connects merchants with buyers to foster loyalty and retention, and international expansion with a heavy focus on the geographies beyond its core markets.
Shopify provides a currency selection product for its merchants to offer internationally to their customers. According to our research, this service doesn’t seem to be used by many Shopify powered stores at present. Next month we will be delving into this issue further, with a report on ecommerce checkout experiences examining the top cross-border players. In our latest report, we examined the economics of cross-border card payments, which dissects the costs and complexities of cross-border payments in foreign and home currencies.
Who are the Top 100 Cross-Border Ecommerce Players?
