Shopify Capital funded $2 billion for merchants

Since its launch, Shopify Capital has provided $2 billion in funding to thousands of entrepreneurs in the U.S., U.K., and Canada.

The cash advances and loans have been important for many merchants during the global pandemic, helping them adapt and find new avenues of growth by allowing them to buy more inventory, hire talent, and launch marketing campaigns.

Previously, the scheme granted funds ranging from $200 to $1 million. Now they are increasing the maximum amount to $2 million to further boost the growth of their fast-scaling merchants. Through state-of-the-art machine learning models, eligible merchants can automatically receive Shopify Capital offers without having to apply. Upon accepting these pre-approved offers, they can receive funding within 2-5 business days. Merchants can choose how they want to invest their funds while maintaining complete ownership of their business.

“Machine learning is the reason we’re able to get our merchants the funding they need, at the speed required to boost their business growth, at the right time. The machine learning principles behind Shopify Capital enabled us to pioneer bringing AI into production in a way that hadn’t been seen in the industry before. Today, we’ve built upon those principles and scaled them across Shopify’s portfolio of AI products.”
– Solmaz Shahalizadeh, VP, Data Science and Engineering, Commerce Intelligence, Shopify

Shopify Capital by the numbers

• Shopify funded more capital to merchants than ever before in Q1 2021, driven by the acceleration of ecommerce. They provided over $300 million in funding to their merchants, up 90% year-on-year, and are seeing larger merchants take on larger advances.

• More merchants are receiving pre-qualified funding offers. Comparing January 2020 to January 2021, the number of merchants who pre-qualified for Shopify Capital increased by 78%. The average pre-qualified amount of funding increased by 16%.

• Merchants are coming back for Shopify Capital again and again. Since it’s launch in 2016, 76% of merchants who receive Capital returned for at least one additional round of funding.