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Shopify was hit with an outage on Cyber Monday, leaving some businesses unable to manage transactions during one of the biggest shopping days of the year.
In an update to its status page, the Canadian e‑commerce company said select merchants were experiencing issues logging into Shopify, while others were unable to access point‑of‑sale systems, a critical portal used to manage transactions and other backend processes.
Later in the day, Shopify said its services were beginning to recover, but that some merchants may still observe disruptions to its POS and admin tools.
“We have found and fixed an issue with our login authentication flow, and are seeing signs of recovery for admin and POS login issues now,” the company said in an update at 2:31 p.m. EST. “We are continuing to monitor recovery.”
A Shopify spokesperson directed inquiries to its status page.
The Downdetector website recorded thousands of users reporting problems with Shopify around 1:15 p.m. EST, after peaking at roughly 4,000 reports at 11:00 a.m. EST.
Shopify provides a suite of software tools for merchants running online businesses, alongside services such as advertising and payment processing. The platform handles more than 10 % of all e‑commerce transactions in the United States.
Originally known as a solution for small businesses and direct‑to‑consumer brands, Shopify now powers storefronts for large retailers including Reebok, Mattel, Barnes & Noble and Nestlé.
The outage coincided with the Cyber Monday discount surge, when holiday shoppers raced to snap up deals. Adobe Analytics estimates U.S. shoppers will spend $14.2 billion online on Monday, a 6.3 % increase from a year earlier. By comparison, Black Friday online sales reached $11.8 billion, up 9.1 % year over year.
Analysts note that the incident underscores the systemic risk of relying on a single commerce platform for high‑volume retail events. With transaction spikes, any latency or authentication failure can cascade across thousands of merchants, potentially eroding consumer confidence and prompting brands to diversify their tech stacks.
From a technical perspective, Shopify’s authentication layer is built on a microservices architecture that scales horizontally. However, the breach suggests a bottleneck in the login workflow, possibly linked to a recent configuration change or third‑party identity provider integration. Companies specializing in distributed identity and zero‑trust security are seeing heightened demand as retailers seek to harden access controls.
In the wake of the outage, some merchants are evaluating complementary point‑of‑sale solutions and backup payment gateways to mitigate future disruptions. The incident also reignites discussion around industry standards for outage communication, with regulators in several jurisdictions proposing stricter reporting requirements for platforms whose downtime directly impacts consumer transactions.
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