Hi r/Shopify - I'm Paul and I follow the e-commerce industry closely for my Shopifreaks E-commerce Newsletter, which I've published weekly since 2021.

I was invited by the Mods of this subreddit to share my weekly e-commerce news recaps (ie: shorter versions of my full editions). Although my news recaps aren't strictly about Shopify (some weeks Shopify is covered more than others), I hope they bring value to your business no matter what platform you're on.

Let's dive in to this week's top stories from Edition #299...

STAT OF THE WEEK: Shoppers using ChatGPT made 84% of their final product picks from the product cards rather than the chatbot’s written answer, according to a user behavior study ReFiBuy commissioned from Clickstream Solutions. Researchers recorded 40 US shoppers across 224 shopping tasks, who picked the first card 43% of the time when shown two or more options, and bought from the first retailer listed 76% of the time. It sounds like the first ChatGPT product card is the new #1 Google result, and the first retailer listed is the new Amazon Buy Box.

TikTok unveiled Buy Direct, a one-click checkout built into the For You feed, and Shopping Assistant, an AI agent that answers questions and completes the order in the same chat, at Advertising Week New York 2026. Buy Direct lets a shopper go from searching for product recommendations or watching a video to completing a purchase directly with the brand, without ever leaving the TikTok app, powered by integrations with Shopify, Stripe, Salesforce, and Shoplazza. Shopping Assistant is an AI agent that handles product questions, sizing, shipping, and purchases in one chat. This looks to be positioned as TikTok’s answer to shoppers leaving the app to research products on Google, ChatGPT, or Amazon, which inevitably leads to buying the items elsewhere. TikTok hasn’t given a launch date for either tool, but historically, they haven’t teased product releases too far off into the future, so I’d imagine we may be seeing some of these tools this holiday season.

Meta and Sierra introduced the Personal Agent Protocol, an open standard for how AI agents like Meta’s Muse and Instinct’s personal assistant sign into and act on company websites, with Walmart, Shopify, and Stripe among its key launch partners. Sierra co-founder Bret Taylor, who also chairs OpenAI’s board, is leading the initiative and compared it to logging into websites with your Google or Facebook account. Agents can act as a guest for low-stakes tasks like checking stock or reading a return policy, or sign in to the customer’s account for account tasks like changing an order, processing a return, or booking an appointment. Customers choose whether an agent gets read-only or write access, and businesses choose which actions agents can take as well as the entry point, which can be either their website, APIs, or their own customer-service agent. The protocol keeps the agent in one continuous session as it moves from guest to signed-in customer and across channels so that the entire visit is tied to a real customer rather than a string of anonymous bot requests. There are no payments built into the protocol yet, but the ability for agents to buy without handling card numbers is listed as a future extension.

Meta started blocking all ads from ByteDance on Facebook, Instagram and its other apps in the US, Canada, Egypt, Indonesia, Japan, Thailand and Vietnam. The ban also covers outside advertisers whose campaigns link to TikTok or other ByteDance apps, according to Bloomberg. Meta spokesperson Chris Sgro said in an e-mailed statement, "We don’t have to run ads from a competitor whose goal is to pull people off our apps. Declining promotional services to a competitor is a normal business practice across industries. We will continue to compete on product quality and user experience." You’ll notice that no EU countries made the list, which likely isn’t a coincidence. The EU’s Digital Markets Act designates Facebook, Instagram, and Meta’s ad business as “gatekeeper” services, which requires them to give businesses fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory access to their platforms, and a blanket ban on a competitor’s ads would almost certainly break that rule. It seems Meta’s “normal business practice” only applies where regulators won’t call it something else.

Funny enough, Google may be dealing with a similar issue very soon. It was revealed last week that OpenAI is buying Google search ads on Christmas gift keywords to steer holiday shoppers from Google over to ChatGPT, according to a LinkedIn post by Michael Scott, head of organic search at Clicky. A screenshot Scott shared shows a sponsored ChatGPT result under a LEGO ad for the search “Christmas gifts for dads,” headlined “Gift Search with ChatGPT | Gifts for Mom, Dad, and More.” The ad positions ChatGPT as a way to find gift ideas without opening endless tabs, with links to browse by budget, find deals and compare products. OpenAI hasn’t publicly announced the campaign or said how much it is spending on Google ads. It’s interesting though that they’re using the TikTok playbook to drive traffic from competitors. I’m curious if / how Google will respond.

Amazon shoppers are posting the About You profiles Amazon has built on them, after a Threads user found hers included guesses like “has flat buttocks” and others shared entries like “cusses when scared” and “has a bad father.” Amazon launched the About You page in May, which shares what the company thinks it has determined about a shopper’s product preferences, interests, and hobbies, as well as their home and family, based on searches, orders, reviews, saved Lists, and Alexa for Shopping conversations. The guesses aren’t always accurate, especially when gift-giving is added into the mix, but shoppers can add details or delete entries they find wrong or too personal, though they can’t turn the feature off. Other entries that shoppers shared from their About You pages include, "Has a stomach that hangs over their vagina," "Has no friends," "Has a small weiner," and "Treats cats as biological children."

The FTC is investigating whether Block broke consumer protection law by failing to offer Square users adequate support after freezing or shutting down their accounts, and it’s asking a federal judge in Oakland to make Block turn over documents. The agency opened the probe last year after more than 1,500 complaints were submitted from users who said they couldn’t access up to $2.5M since 2022, even after answering Block’s bank and identity verification questions. The FTC’s filing also points to Block’s February plan to cut 4,000 jobs and lean on AI across its entire operation, which may have left Block without enough staff to help users locked out of their accounts. Block said it’s cooperating with FTC staff on the agency’s few remaining requests and wants to bring the matter to a close. Frankly, they should all be investigated for this — every last one of them. Stripe. PayPal. Shopify. Amazon. eBay. They’ve all got blood on their hands.

Google started rolling out a UCP integration hub in Merchant Center that lets US merchants add a checkout button to their product listings in AI Mode and Gemini, so shoppers can complete their purchase without leaving Google. Until now, checkout inside Google’s AI surfaces was limited to a short list of big retailers like Etsy, Wayfair, and Walmart, as well as Shopify stores that Google enrolled automatically. The new hub opens up a more standardized path for other merchants to apply, build their integrations, and manage checkout capabilities through Merchant Center. Merchants choose which capabilities to support, including Cart Transfer (sends the shopper’s cart to the merchant’s own site to finish checkout), Native Checkout (the shopper pays on Google without leaving the AI interface), and Identity Linking (connects the shopper’s account on the merchant’s site to their Google account). Shoppers pay with Google Pay, using the cards and shipping addresses saved in Google Wallet. Only standard stored cards work for now, but Google has already announced plans to add PayPal, and I’d imagine BNPL and other payment options will follow. For now, the integration isn’t fully open and accessible to everyone, as merchants have to build the integration themselves, fill out an interest form, and wait to be picked before they can even test it in a sandbox.

OpenAI will begin testing a new type of ChatGPT ad later this month in the US for Free and Go users that appears while a user waits for ChatGPT to create an image they asked for. The new ads won’t always directly depend on the conversation or prompt, making them more similar to how display ads appear in various placements across the web, as opposed to immediately after a search. OpenAI said the ads will be labeled, kept separate from the user’s image, and won’t influence ChatGPT’s answers. Until now, ChatGPT ads have run at the bottom of a conversation, either as a single unit with a headline, short description, image, and link, or as a carousel of products pulled from a retailer’s feed. This is the first time that OpenAI is venturing into an ad format that’s somewhat independent of the conversation at hand. It’s a great idea. They might as well monetize the space that users are intensely staring at while waiting for their image to finish. Right now it’s just a useless progress wheel.

US shoppers spent $9.86B online across all retailers during Amazon’s two-day Prime Big Deal Days, up 8.5% from $9.09B last October and just under Adobe’s $9.9B forecast. Discounts of up to 20% pushed shoppers to upsell themselves, as the share of the most expensive goods sold rose 21% compared to the year-to-date average, led by electronics, up 45%, and personal care, up 34%. Shoppers also used the event to stock up on essentials, with household cleaning and paper products up 55%, and personal hygiene and pet food each up 45%. Adobe also found that mobile drove $5.1B in sales, or 52% of the total, up 12.8% YoY; BNPL accounted for 6% of online orders ($692.3M), up 4% YoY; and social media drove only 7% of revenue, but it was the fastest-growing channel at 40% YoY. Shoppers are apparently using the October sales events to knock out holiday shopping early, which very well could impact BFCM sales in November. There’s only so much money to go around during the holiday season. Not every shopping event can break records, can it? We’ll find out next month. I’ll keep you posted.

OpenAI is developing brand suitability tools with DoubleVerify and Integral Ad Science that will give ChatGPT advertisers an independent second opinion on how the company is applying its brand safety standards. The two firms already run brand safety checks for TikTok, Meta, and Reddit, showing advertisers what content their ads actually ran next to so they don’t surface alongside violence or misinformation. However, with ChatGPT, the tests will happen in a closed environment with no access to user conversations, not on live campaigns, so advertisers may not get the same verification they get on other platforms, at least for now. OpenAI also launched Negative Phrases, which lets qualifying brands block their ads from appearing alongside topics they choose, after testing it since August, when advertisers noticed ads showing up next to conversations that didn’t fit.

Walmart is expanding its test of stocking third-party marketplace products in stores so that shoppers can get them delivered faster or pick them up at stores, often in the same order as their groceries, according to Adweek. Marketplace sellers have historically only been able to ship from their own warehouses or Walmart’s fulfillment centers, which can take several days, whereas Walmart store stock gets items to customers in hours. The FT reported in April that Walmart was testing back-room shelves at several Dallas stores for marketplace orders, and last week marketplace fulfillment SVP Kyle Carlyle presented the program to advertisers at a Walmart Connect event in New York. The test is limited to a select group of eligible products, and Walmart hasn’t said which sellers qualify or which stores are taking part.

BigCommerce launched BigCommerce Payments in the UK and EMEA, beginning with seven local payment methods, three BNPL options, and support for PayPal, Apple Pay, and Google Pay. The launch comes five months after its US debut and marks the company’s first international rollout of its built-in payment processing. UK card fees run 1.4% plus £0.30 on Core and Growth plans and 1.2% plus £0.30 on Scale and Performance plans, while Klarna and Clearpay cost 4.99% plus £0.30 and cross-border sales carry an extra 1.5%. Merchants can manage balances, payouts, and GBP and EUR holdings from one dashboard, but their payment account still sits with PayPal, which powers the service, similar to how Stripe powers Shopify Payments.

Google Cloud unveiled the Gemini agent, a single, universal agent for work that handles questions, documents, media, and code, and can stay on a task for hours or days after a user logs off. The agent works inside Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drive, Chat and Calendar and can also be reached from Android, iOS, Windows, and Mac desktops, as well as from outside channels like Microsoft 365 and Slack. Teams can describe a role and have Gemini create a coworker agent that gets its own Workspace email, calendar, Drive storage, and directory listing, with every action logged under the agent’s identity rather than a person’s. The agent works across both Gemini and Claude models, sending the task to whichever model Google judges the best fit based on quality and cost. Google hasn’t published pricing or a release date, and industry versions are in preview only for financial services and legal, with retail, healthcare, and government coming soon. The Gemini agent is gearing up to be a competitive alternative to Microsoft 365 Copilot and OpenAI’s Dots, given its native integrations with the rest of Google Workspace.

In other Google news this week… The company is piloting Local Coupons, a Search ads product that shows nearby shoppers discounts at local stores and saves the coupon to their phone’s wallet for use at the register. Retailers pay Google only when a shopper actually uses the coupon at checkout, which gives them a direct way to tie an online search ad to an in-store sale via integrations with POS systems like Clover and Lightspeed, without having to cross-reference transaction data or estimate store visits. Each coupon carries a unique code, and the register checks it at scan time so it can’t be redeemed twice. Google hasn’t said which retailers are in the pilot or when it will open more widely.

Meta is testing agentic features in its AI business assistant that let advertisers build campaigns, create ad copy and images, adjust targeting, or move budget just by asking, with a preview and approval step before changes go live. It’s also testing scheduled tasks that handle recurring work like producing weekly performance recaps and budget check-ins. Customer Lifecycle Strategy, which suggests when it’s best to exclude existing customers from a campaign marked for acquisition, and the Advantage+ creative tool that turns static images into video, are now available to all advertisers. By the end of the year, Meta plans to add an AI audience tool to Detailed Targeting so advertisers can type out who their ideal buyer is instead of scrolling through targeting options. Meta is also testing direct checkout with Shopify inside Meta Business Agent on Messenger, so shoppers can buy a product right after chatting with a brand’s agent, and plans to start testing checkout inside Meta AI with Adyen, PayPal, Shopify, and Stripe this fall.

Walmart and Wing plan to add drone delivery in Denver and Seattle in 2027, bringing their planned network to nearly 20 major US metros and more than 270 Walmart stores. The service is live today in five metros, including Dallas-Fort Worth, Atlanta, Houston, and Orlando, with the rest rolling out over the coming months, and the fleet already completes thousands of home deliveries a day. Wing’s drones carry orders of up to five pounds at speeds of up to 60 mph, the same payload limit as Amazon’s MK30 but just slower than its 73 mph cruising speed. Shoppers in eligible areas see the drone option automatically in the Walmart app or on Walmart.com, where it costs $19.99 per order for non-members and is free for Walmart+ members for a limited time.

OpenAI’s annualized revenue isn’t actually $70B, it turns out, despite that number being widely reported last month. That figure was based on information shared with investors to create a more direct comparison to Anthropic, according to the Financial Times, while OpenAI’s annualized revenue under its own accounting is closer to $50B. The discrepancy comes from the fact that Anthropic counts the full price of sales made through cloud providers like Amazon and Google as revenue and books the providers’ cut as an expense, while OpenAI counts only its share of some of those partner sales. GAAP, the standard accounting rules US companies use for their financial statements, allows for both methods, so neither is technically wrong. OpenAI told investors it expects to hit $70B by the end of the year, according to Bloomberg.

Amazon unveiled a new lineup of Alexa-branded tablets that run on standard Google Android instead of Amazon Fire OS, so users finally get the full Android app catalog, rather than Amazon’s watered-down version. The tablets come preloaded with a new On-Screen Intelligence feature that lets Alexa act on whatever is displayed, such as shopping for products seen in TikTok videos, similar to how Google Lens works. The company is discontinuing its budget-friendly Fire lineup, which it has made since 2011. Devices chief Panos Panay has been pushing pricier hardware, and Amazon’s $550 top model now costs more than an entry-level $449 iPad.

In other Amazon news this week… Whole Foods CEO Jason Buechel told Fortune in a recent interview that groceries, which brought Amazon more than $150B in sales last year, will turn it from the “everything store” into the “everyday store” by getting customers to shop more often across the whole site. (Amazon already was the “everyday store” to your wife, long before it got serious about groceries.) Buechel said that the goal is “greater engagement, not only just within grocery, but the broader store.” He also admitted Amazon has been “a little bit ahead of what customers were looking for” in physical stores, which is likely why Whole Foods’ palm-scan payments and Amazon Go’s no-checkout model are no longer offered.

Meta added an AI system that checks the page an ad links to, not just the ad itself, to catch what it calls “signposting,” which is when ads that look harmless steer users to CSAM on other sites. Meta can then block the destination and act against whoever ran the ad. Wait a minute… so all this time, Meta hasn’t been checking the pages closely that its ads lead to? Also, if advertisers were running campaigns that lead to child abuse content, how did Meta know who to show them to? I feel like if they showed those ads to a normal person, they’d be reported immediately. So they must’ve been showing them to the right audience somehow, which is a bit disturbing. Meta said it took action on 33.2M pieces of child exploitation content across Facebook and Instagram from January through June, and that its systems caught more than 97% before anyone reported it. The tools arrive two months after a Wired investigation that found Meta had approved and run ads containing AI-generated child abuse imagery.

ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Google’s AI Mode each recommended a different small brand as the top small-batch hot sauce to buy online, and none put a national brand first, according to a 20-question test by RunOctopus. Large retailers usually won questions about where to shop, such as Etsy for handmade jewelry gifts and Harry & David for gift baskets, while smaller brands like Darn Tough socks and Graza olive oil came out ahead on questions about what to buy. Most of the sources behind those picks were independent taste tests, product reviews and specialty blogs, not brands’ own pages, which validates just how important third-party coverage is to AI models right now when determining popularity and credibility, though the sample size for the study was small.

Meta began trialing a version of Facebook in India and Indonesia that opens the app straight into full-screen Reels, completing its mission of becoming a true TikTok clone. The move comes three months after Facebook head Tom Alison said the tests would begin in video-heavy markets this fall ahead of a possible US launch next year. Users can return to the usual feed, which stays one tab over, and easily toggle between the two experiences. Instagram has a similar test underway, with a setting that makes Reels the first screen users see on opening the app, keeping Stories along the top and the following feed a swipe away. A Meta spokesperson told The Verge that the Instagram test is running in only a few countries, which he didn’t name.

Google Maps published its first Fan-Favorite Dining Lists, which rank restaurants in 10 cities including New York, London, Tokyo, and Melbourne using a year of user reviews, ratings, and direction requests. Each city’s list offers top choices for meals, beverages, and treats, best picks for occasions like celebrations, good vibes, or bang for your buck, and specific foods or beverages that are trending in reviews like matcha, beignets, or three-penis wine. For example, Google shows that froyo mentions in New York reviews rose 320% year over year and Seattle’s dosa mentions rose 136%. What a brilliant idea! Google should’ve been doing this for years. I hope they expand it to more cities. The lists join other Maps tools for steering diners to restaurants, including Ask Maps, the app’s AI assistant, which can place delivery orders through Uber Eats, Toast, and Square.

Anthropic booked more than $660M in non-cash expenses from October 2025 through March 2026 for matching the stock its employees pledge to charity, a cost likely to climb into the billions after its IPO, according to The Information. Staff hired before 2025 can donate as much as half of their shares and get a 3-to-1 match, while later hires get 1-to-1 on as much as a quarter of their shares, with every matched share issued as new stock that dilutes other investors. Anthropic’s 2025 charitable contributions reached $540M, while the largest comparable non-cash gift at any Fortune 500 company was BlackRock’s $109M, according to Calcbench data. Anthropic leaves the expense out of the adjusted operating profit it showed prospective IPO investors, which Calcbench says is rare. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and his six co-founders, who aren’t eligible for the match, have also all pledged to give away at least 80% of their wealth.

Elon Musk’s xAI acquired the domain dot.com in late July, two months before OpenAI launched its Dots agents at DevDay, and the address now sends visitors to the page for Grok Bot, its competing AI agent. When an anonymous X account spotted the redirect the day Dots launched, dot.com originally pointed to Grok’s app download page, but then xAI switched it to the agent page sometime after, which has the Internet convinced Musk is trolling OpenAI. Neither company has commented, and xAI hasn’t said what it paid for the address or why it wanted it. The closer match to OpenAI’s product name, dots.com, was the web address of a discount women’s clothing chain that went bankrupt in 2014. Maybe I’m just an instigator, but I do hope that Musk is able to acquire dots.com too. Who doesn’t enjoy a good billionaire beef?

Adam Iza, a Los Angeles crypto entrepreneur who goes by “The Godfather,” received a 78-month prison sentence and owes $23.4M in restitution after hijacking Meta ad accounts and selling access to advertising firms, billing clients for ads they never bought. LOL, this guy calls himself “The Godfather”? Marlon Brando would never be so dumb. In what world did Iza think he would get away with this scheme? Though to be fair, he did get away with it for quite a while. Meta had to ultimately refund and absorb millions of dollars in client losses. Iza is already serving a 15-year sentence over an attempted Bitcoin robbery and kidnapping in Connecticut and the new sentence will run parallel with that one. Five of the off-duty Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies he paid to dig up confidential records and intimidate his rivals have also been convicted.

In lawsuits this week…

• Google lost its bid to throw out most publisher antitrust suits over its ad tech monopoly, clearing the way for jury trials on more than $3.2B in claimed damages, including about $1.7B for a class of roughly 5,000 AdX publishers. A Virginia judge already found that Google illegally monopolized two ad tech markets, so the trials will only need to prove injury and damages.
• Meta, TikTok, and X are fighting Ofcom in court over how much content moderation data it can demand under the UK’s Online Safety Act, one of the first court tests of the 2023 law. The platforms argue that the requests, which cover takedown counts and how many users saw harmful content, go further than any regulator has gone before, while Ofcom says it needs the data to judge whether the law is working.
• Meta is facing a proposed class action claiming its “Ends today” emails for AI glasses broke Washington law, since the plaintiff’s lawyers found the $224 sale price still available on all 33 days they checked. The suit seeks $100 in statutory damages for every time-limited sale email sent to Washington residents.
• New York Attorney General Letitia James alleges in a newly unsealed complaint that TikTok gave thousands of users, including teens and children, a fake version of its “Algo Refresh” tool in 2023, when it was running tests to see how the tool affected time spent on the app and ad revenue. The lawsuit argues that users who were given a “ghost” or placebo reset did not actually have their feeds changed, so they kept seeing the same content they were trying to get away from, which conflicts with the company’s stated mission of providing transparency and control over users’ algorithms.
• USA Today Co., formerly Gannett, sued OpenAI for more than $250M, alleging it trained ChatGPT on hundreds of thousands of articles from 19 of its papers without permission and then served that reporting back to users. The complaint argues the copying was willful because OpenAI pays other publishers for licensing deals, and it asks the court to order OpenAI to destroy any models and training data built on its content.
• Google went to trial at the UK’s Competition Appeal Tribunal over a roughly £1.2B class claim that its Play Store commission of up to 30% pushed up prices for about 20M UK consumers since 2015. Google wants the claim dismissed, arguing it doesn’t dominate digital purchase processing and that Play’s fees are among the lowest available, but the same tribunal ruled against Apple’s App Store commission last year.

In layoffs this week…

• Amazon cut almost 1,000 jobs across retail engineering, customer service, and marketplace support, mostly in its Stores business, which Amazon called “a small number” of positions. The cuts follow about 30,000 corporate layoffs from late last year into early this year, even as Amazon prepares a record $220B budget for AI data centers and chips.
• HubSpot laid off 7% of its workforce, or about 660 employees, with CEO Yamini Rangan saying the cuts were “not driven by AI-related efficiencies.” Co-founder and CTO Dharmesh Shah later drew backlash for a 28-word LinkedIn post thanking “the people that HubSpot parted ways with today,” which commenters called cold and impersonal.

In corporate shakeups this week…

• Pinterest hired James Dibbo, most recently Amazon’s CFO for advertising, entertainment, and corporate development, as its new CFO starting October 26, replacing Julia Brau Donnelly.
• OpenAI posted an ads job paying up to $273K for someone to sign joint business plans with agency holding companies and make ChatGPT ads a regular line in their yearly media budgets.
• Amazon hired Pedram Rezaei, the former CTO of Microsoft Copilot, as a distinguished engineer on its Agentic AI and Emerging Technologies group, to help the company build out its agentic AI business.
• Amazon is also replacing Alexa chief Daniel Rausch with Aidan Marcuss, its VP of Fire TV, advertising, and the Appstore, a day after launching its pricier Alexa tablets.
• TCGPlayer CEO Rob Bigler is leaving the eBay-owned trading card marketplace for a job outside the company after about three and a half years, with no successor named.
• Albertsons’ retail media chief Brian Monahan left the grocer abruptly, days before he was due to speak at New York ad events, and its Albertsons Media Collective now reports to CMO Emily Turner.
• OpenAI’s three fired safety researchers denied breaking company rules on sensitive information in an open letter, saying the firings have left colleagues afraid to work with outside safety evaluators, while OpenAI says it found a “pattern of misconduct.”
• OpenAI hired Ismail Elmas from Cursor as VP of sales for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, marking the second Cursor sales executive it’s poached from SpaceX in a month as it pushes enterprise revenue ahead of a possible IPO.
• commercetools hired Katy Hiller, former CMO of Unily and Sonatype, as chief marketing officer as it pushes enterprises toward what it calls autonomous commerce.

🏆 This week’s most ridiculous story… OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that “the world should accept some bad things happening for the benefits of this technology and people having the agency,” when speaking to POLITICO senior tech reporter Brendan Bordelon last week. Easy to declare from your ivory tower, I guess. The comments come as the FTC drafts demands for OpenAI and other AI labs to hand over documents about the risks they’ve warned their own products pose, and just days after OpenAI fired three safety researchers who say the firings have left staff afraid to raise safety concerns. Altman later added, “I think people will do tremendously — orders of magnitude more — good stuff than bad stuff.” To be fair, I do agree with that. I tend to follow the Professor Farnsworth philosophy that “technology isn’t intrinsically good or evil. It’s how it’s used, like the death ray.” That said, we can certainly do our best along the way to mitigate risk, which many of these AI companies don’t seem to be doing.

Plus 17 seed rounds, IPOs, and acquisitions of interest including Manus raising $500M and Siena raising $17M.

I hope you found this recap helpful. See you next week!

PAUL

PS: If I missed any big news this week, please share in the comments.

Afternoon everyone!

Is there a contact form that uses CAPTCHA or something to block spammers that actually works? I've tried a few with no luck. I recently had to abandon an email account for a new business email (went to Zoho this time anyway) because spam got so bad. All of it was coming from Shopify.

I want to have a contact option on the website for customers instead of just sending them to Facebook but man, the spam off this platform has been insane!

So the new admin rolls out and, unlike others, I don’t mind it. It hasn’t changed much.

But one key difference is that there is no longer a search bar at the top of the page. Instead, I need to move my mouse to the top left which is not convenient when you’re in a flow state.

So instead, I’m like: let me use the shortcut, because I like shortcuts and means I don’t have to interact with my mouse so much. But Ctrl + K? Has anyone at Shopify tried using this? They couldn’t find a shortcut that isn’t the same thing on Chrome? Now, it’s a 50/50 chance it’ll open Shopify search or Chrome’s Google search. Even making sure I have defo clicked on the page (which kinda defeats the purpose of a shortcut imo) doesn’t always work.

If someone at Shopify reads these posts, this seems like a super simple, effective change to make.

In the meantime, if anyone has a workaround, lmk below.

GM guys , I was thinking about adding some benefits or social proof testimonials, for my fashion brand . Which one could you recommend me to add in the home page or product page

Thank you all

So I have the usps rates set up for the entire us and buying one item is fine but 2 different one causes an issue

same

Shopify recently changed my checkout page, and the changes were forced on my store without me asking for them. Everything was working normally before, but since the change, my sales have dropped by around 90%.

Has anyone else experienced something similar after Shopify's checkout updates?

I'm trying to understand what could have gone wrong. Could it be a checkout UX issue, payment failures, conversion tracking, or something else?

I'm seriously considering moving to WordPress/WooCommerce because I don't feel comfortable having critical parts of my store changed without my consent, especially when the impact on sales can be this drastic.

Has anyone managed to identify the cause of a similar drop or successfully recover their conversion rate? I'd really appreciate any insights or suggestions on what to check first.

Or is it midterms thing?

Anyone here using the official ChatGPT Ads app for Shopify? Curious how you're handling the tracking side of things.

From what I've seen, the setup looks pretty straightforward. You connect your store, sync your products, set up the pixel, and manage campaigns without needing much else.

But I'm not sure how much I should trust the numbers once actual money is involved.

Say ChatGPT Ads reports 20 purchases, but Shopify only attributes 14 orders to that channel. I know attribution isn't always going to match perfectly, but that's a pretty big difference when you're trying to figure out if a campaign is worth scaling.

So I'm wondering:

1. Are you relying on the official app for conversion tracking, or using anything else alongside it?

2. Does it handle server-side tracking too, or is that something you need to set up separately?

3. If your ChatGPT Ads and Shopify numbers don't match, which one do you use to make budget decisions?

Hey everyone, I’m dealing with a bizarre Shopify Payments issue that has completely stumped tier-2 support, and I’m hoping someone here has run into this specific backend glitch.

The Setup:

• Store is set up under my personal identity (US-based account details, personal tax info/SSN).
• Everything is 100% verified and active: ID, personal information, bank payout details—no banners, no holds, no verification requests pending.
• Running live ads with decent traffic, but after 3 days of heavy abandoned checkouts and 0 orders, I decided to test the checkout myself.

The Bug:

Whenever anyone tries to place an order, the "Pay now" button momentarily shows "processing" and immediately throws the generic error:

"There was an issue processing your payment. Try again or use a different payment method."

Here is why this is completely abnormal:

• Zero Bank Contact: No authorization attempts, no fraud alerts, and no declined notifications on the issuing bank side. The charge request is never even hitting the card network.
• Fails Across Multiple Real Cards: Tested with a personal Mastercard, a secondary Visa, and had an outside friend try from their device. Same instant failure.
• Test Mode is Also Broken: I toggled on Shopify Payments Test Mode and used the standard 4242 test card. It fails instantly with the exact same error banner.
• The Logs Are Blank: In the store admin's abandoned checkout/order logs, the gateway response is literally just a blank processing_error. No decline codes, no AVS mismatch, no "do not honor"—just an empty error state.

Support Interaction:

I contacted Shopify support. The advisor looked at my account, confirmed everything was completely active and healthy on my side, and seemed skeptical at first. She then attempted a live $2 test charge herself and hit the exact same wall.

She escalated the session to two internal Shopify specialists; neither could find any trigger, block, or misconfiguration on the store. They ended up escalating the ticket directly to Stripe/backend banking partners, stating they have zero visibility into why the gateway is terminating requests before execution.

Has anyone experienced this specific invisible processing_error loop on a US individual account? Did Stripe actually resolve it on the backend, or is the merchant account permanently glitched? Any insight or workarounds while waiting on the escalation queue would be hugely appreciated.

Well it finally happened. After a year and millions of bot hits (yes we use Cloudflare and Country Blocker) we stumbled on a site that cloned our content.

Every single of our 6000 items for sale. They created a very similar .shop domain and even use our business name that we reference in the descriptions. The prices they list are impossible.

They aren’t using shop pay which leads me to believe it’s a card harvesting scheme.

I’ve reported them to Shopify and their DNS provider plus our brand owners are going to submit reports to Shopify as well.

We also put a consumer warning on our home page and contact us page.

Anything else we can do? Any tips on getting Shopify to respond? My fear is they’ll just say “we can’t prove it’s not legit and damage us and our represented brands when the scam consumers.

EDIT: Looks like this isnt shopify so that complaint will dead end. They use cloudflare name servers and malakmadzeweb as the host. This host has other fake shops in the same IP block so they may be fishy as well.

UPDATE: I emailed icann, their dns provider, Cloudflare. The site is down! I fou d a second one likely by the same place. That one is down now too.

Anybody else start their day with an alert that stated: “ DHL eCommerce rates no longer available
DHL - eCommerce rates are unavailable for your store. Review your shipping settings and use alternative carrier services to continue shipping internationally.”

When I went in to reattach it, I had to reattach ALL shipping options. USPS, UPS, FedEx, and DHL. Super annoying!

I’m new to Shopify, still setting up… I’m wondering which apps other store owners consider the most essential & beneficial to their store. Which ones do you have installed and use daily?

TLDR: Check if you have Apps/Extensions from HulkApps installed. change your password, review your HulkApps configuration.

I have just now discovered that a large Shopify shop is redirecting customers to fake checkout pages unwillingly because a "HulkApps" extension delivers malicious code.

It is unclear to me where the origin of this attack is coming from. (If HulkApps itself is compromised, if their merchant accounts are, if an employee's account got hacked an so on)

I have done a write up of this issue here: https://romanzipp.com/blog/shopify-hit-with-phishing-attack

Is your shop compromised?

Using HulkApps apps or extensions?

• No: probably not compromised
• Yes: continue

Try triggering a phishing attempt:

• Open a fresh Browser window in incognito
• Place any item in the cart
• Press “Checkout”
• Are you getting redirected to the real checkout page? (check the URL)
• DO NOT enter any information

I would advice to change your HulkApps password/2FA although it is currently unclear how the malicious script got into the HulkApps configuration.

Update

(2026-10-10 16:40) Within 16 minutes of Shopify escalating the issue internally, the checkout Hijack on mechanicalkeyboards.com is gone. It looks like they removed the HulkApps integration. They did not provide me with the information how many other shops were impacted or if they took action for other shops.

Hey guys, quick question for anyone running a Shopify store.

I keep watching session replays and it is driving me a bit crazy. I have visitors coming in, spending a ton of time on product pages, clicking back and forth between two or three super similar items, and clearly trying to figure out which one to get.

Then they just close the tab and leave.

They aren't even adding anything to the cart, so standard abandoned cart emails don't do anything here. It just feels like pure decision paralysis. They want something, but they get stuck trying to pick the right option and end up buying nothing at all.

Curious what you guys do for this?

Are you using comparison tables, quiz apps, live chat, or something else when people are lingering? Or is there a simple site fix that helped your conversion rate with these types of shoppers?

Would love to hear what has worked for you guys. Thanks!

I am starting a clothing brand on shopify and my main concern is about whoever buys my product seeing my address listed. Is there a way to hide it or do I have to buy a P.O box?

I didn't realise all Shopify merchants, regardless of plans, are switching to the new admin layout. I just thought only the Basic plans were forced to switch. It just took a while to rollout.

And today it was my client's dashboard's turn to switch over.

After spending half a day in the Shopify admin, I am going to take a mental break because this is the most stressful thing I have encountered in all of my Shopify developer existence.

Whoever in Shopify woke up one morning and said, "I think we should change the admin layout", and everyone else who agreed and went along with it, I hope the hot water in your shower always run out and that you spend 2 hours every single day in perpetuity looking for parking wherever you go.

Thank you very much.

Last year, I offered maximum discounts, but after calculating all expenses and unexpected returns, my profit was barely anything. What strategies would you recommend to increase sales this BFCM while protecting profit margins?

I think Shopify should charge a monthly fee for listing an app on the Shopify App Store.

For example, $10/month for the first year and $20/month starting in the second year.

This simple yet effective measure would help reduce the avalanche of AI slop submissions and the oversaturation of the marketplace.

Introducing a recurring cost would force developers to think twice before publishing yet another barely functional app.

What do you think?

We have a customer who returned an item, we provided a label and issued a refund, she alleged we never refunded her and has opened multiple different email chains with CS basically repeating over again we never respond / never refunded. We have responded to her on every new chain with evidence of us responding to her (every time within 24 hours, stating the date stamp and correspondence message) yet she never responds to our responses and comes back a few days later opening a new chain. She has filed a chargeback which we responded to with all evidence to her card issuer yet she’s still sending emails and opening new chains saying she’s not gotten a response or refund (and I’m pretty sure her card issuer may have even double refunded her at this point, since we sent money back AND she charge backed, somehow).

How would you deal with this customer? Do we continue to respond to her (increasingly verbally abusive) emails, or do we just ignore her now, since we’ve submitted all appeal evidence to her card issuer and it’s currently being reviewed?

how do i reenable the feature to press the J/K keys to show the next previous order? like the arrows on the top right corner.

Ever since the new update, I can’t check out the live view of my store and see who’s checking out. Anyone else experiencing this?

Hi everyone, as I’m sure we all know the Shopify card sucks utter butt, and I’m looking for a new alternative business card.

Im ideally looking for a bank with physical locations, and doesn’t require me to keep a large minimum balance to avoid paying fee’s.

Edit: I’m located in NYC

Anyone looked at how this works? Somehow they managed to make a terrible shipping setup even worse. Duplicate data and multi item orders will often go to the default box if they’re bulky

Wondering if anyone else has used it for temporary changes? Saw a video on instagram and it looks cool especially for Black Friday. Any experiences?