Executive Briefing

Shopify’s actually-clever consumer rewards program

Also: Chipotle is playing offense again.

One of the low-key best pieces of software created over the past decade is Shop Pay, the super-fast checkout service from Shopify, the e-commerce hosting platform. With just a couple of clicks, it makes checking out feel more like a fun little dance than a forced exchange.

This is extra smart because a fast, frictionless checkout experience is great for everyone involved: The consumer, whose time is respected; the merchant, which has a better chance of completing the sale before you change your mind; and Shopify, which can then collect a higher fee as both the payment processor and as the e-commerce platform provider (and build an ever-growing set of logged-in shoppers, now “well over 100 million,” with stored payment information and a consolidated flow of user data).

Consumers used Shop Pay to spend $11 billion during the holiday fourth quarter, Shopify said this past week during its Q4 earnings call. That’s about one third of the $34 billion worth of payments that Shopify processed during the quarter, and almost 20% of the $61 billion total spent at Shopify stores during the quarter. Pretty good.

It’s also, as I’ve written previously, allowed Shopify to do something few enterprise software providers are able to do: Start to build a beloved little consumer brand around Shop Pay and its growing collection of Shop-branded services.

Its latest is a sort-of rewards and loyalty program called Shop Cash, which started rolling out over the past several months for some people in the US.

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Dan Frommer

Hi, I’m Dan Frommer and this is The New Consumer, a publication about how and why people spend their time and money.

I’m a longtime tech and business journalist, and I’m excited to focus my attention on how technology continues to profoundly change how things are created, experienced, bought, and sold. The New Consumer is supported by your membership — join now to receive my reporting, analysis, and commentary directly in your inbox, via my member-exclusive newsletter. Thanks in advance.

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