Welcome to Shopify!
As part of our mission to help make commerce better for everyone, Shopify Inc. and its affiliates, including Shopify Data Processing (USA) Inc., Shopify Payments (USA) Inc., Shopify (USA) Inc., and Shopify International Limited (collectively, “Shopify”) collect and process a lot of information. This Privacy Policy is intended to help you better understand how we collect, use and store your personal information—whether you are a merchant or end user that uses Shopify’s products, applications or services (together, the “Services”), a customer that shops at a store using our technology, a customer that has opted into Shopify Pay, a participant in Shopify’s “Partners” program, or whether you’re simply visiting this website. By using any of Shopify’s Services, or by dealing with a merchant using Shopify’s Services, you are agreeing to the terms of this Privacy Policy and, as applicable, the Shopify Terms of Service.
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time in order to reflect, for example, changes to our privacy practices or for other operational, legal, or regulatory reasons. If we make material changes to this Privacy Policy, we will give you notice of such changes by posting the revised policy on this Website, and where appropriate, by other means. By continuing to use this Website or the Support Service after these changes are posted, you agree to the revised policy.
Privacy matters! If you are a merchant, your customers need to understand how you (and how Shopify) collects and processes their personal information as the data controller. Accordingly, if you use the Services, you agree to post an up-to-date and accurate privacy policy on your storefront that complies with the laws applicable to your business. You also agree to obtain consent from your customers for the use and access of their personal information by Shopify and other third parties. In addition, if you are collecting any sensitive personal information from your customers (including information relating to medical or health conditions, racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership or sexuality), you agree to obtain affirmative, express consent from your customers for the use and access of sensitive personal information by Shopify and other third parties. To help you get started on creating your own privacy policy, you can check out our privacy policy generator.
We collect your name, company name, address, email address, phone number(s) and payment details (for example, your credit card information).
We collect data about the Shopify websites that you visit. We also collect data about how and when you access your account and the Shopify platform, including information about the device and browser you use, your network connection, your IP address, and information about how you browse through the Shopify interface.
Upon completing the sign-up process for the Services, and depending on your location, we may create a Shopify Payments account on your behalf. If you activate a Shopify Payments account (applicable to merchants in certain jurisdictions), we collect your business address, business type, business ID number, date of birth (if you are an individual business owner), bank account information and government-issued identification information where applicable, such as your Social Security Number or your Social Insurance Number or, alternatively, if you are Canadian merchant and elect not to provide your Social Insurance Number, a copy of your government-issued identification.
We collect personal information about your customers that you share with us or that customers provide while shopping or during checkout.
Where we need to verify your identity (for example, if there are concerns around identity theft, or if you call into support and we need to authenticate your account), we may request that you provide us with government-issued identification information.
We use some of the personal information you provide us to conduct some level of automated decision-making -- for example, we use certain personal information to help us screen accounts for risk or fraud concerns.
We will also use personal information in other cases where you have given us your express permission.
We collect personal information when you sign up for our Services, when you access our Services or otherwise provide us with the information.
We also partner with third parties who provide us information about merchants or prospective merchants, for example to help us screen out merchants associated with fraud.
Shopify works with a variety of third parties and service providers to help provide you with our Services and we may share personal information with them to support these efforts.
We may also share your information in the following circumstances:
Personal information may also be shared with a company that acquires our business, whether through merger, acquisition, bankruptcy, dissolution, reorganization, or other similar transaction or proceeding. If this happens, we will post a notice on our home page.
Shopify will always ask for your consent before sharing your personal information with third parties for purposes other than those described in this Section 2.
Shopify is responsible for all onward transfers of personal information to third parties in accordance with the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework, the Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework, and Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA).
We collect our merchants’ customers’ name, email, shipping and billing address, payment details, company name, phone number, IP address, information about orders you initiate, information about the Shopify-supported merchant stores that you visit, and information about the device and browser you use.
We use some of the personal information you provide us to conduct some level of automated decision-making -- for example, we use certain personal information (for example, IP addresses or payment information) to automatically block certain potentially fraudulent transactions for a short period of time.
We collect this information when you use or access a store that uses our Services, such as when you visit a merchant’s site, place an order or sign up for an account on a merchant’s site.
We also collect this information when you opt into Shopify Pay, or use Shopify Pay to pre-fill your checkout information.
Additionally, we partner with third parties who provide us information about our merchants’ customers, for example to help us screen out merchants associated with fraud.
Shopify works with a variety of third parties and service providers to help provide our merchants with the Services and we may share personal information with them to support these efforts.
We may also share your information in the following circumstances:
Personal information may also be shared with a company that acquires our business or the business of a merchant whose store you visit or access, whether through merger, acquisition, bankruptcy, dissolution, reorganization, or other similar transaction or proceeding.
Shopify is responsible for all onward transfers of personal information to third parties in accordance with the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework, the Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework, and Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA).
Partners are individuals or businesses that have agreed to the terms of the Shopify Partner Program to work with Shopify to promote the Services by (a) referring clients to Shopify; (b)developing Shopify store themes for merchant use; or (c) developing apps using the Shopify Application Interface (API) for merchant use.
We collect your name, company name, website, twitter or other social media handles, phone number(s), address, business type, email address, PayPal Account, and GST/HST number.
We collect data about the Shopify websites that you visit. We also collect data about how and when you access your account and the Shopify platform, including information about the device and browser you use, your network connection, your IP address, and information about how you browse through the Shopify interface.
We collect personal information about your customers that you share with us or that they provide to us directly.
We will also use personal information in other cases where you have given us express permission.
Shopify works with a variety of third parties and service providers to help provide you with our Services and we may share personal information with them to support these efforts.
We may also share your information in the following circumstances:
Personal information may also be shared with a company that acquires our business, whether through merger, acquisition, bankruptcy, dissolution, reorganization, or other similar transaction or proceeding. If this happens, we will post a notice on our home page.
Shopify will always ask for your consent before sharing your personal information with third parties for purposes other than those described in this Section 4.
Shopify is responsible for all onward transfers of personal information to third parties in accordance with the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework, the Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework, and Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA).
As you visit or browse the Shopify websites, we collect information about the device and browser you use, your network connection, your IP address, and information about the cookies installed on your device. We also collect personal information submitted by you via any messaging feature available from any of our websites (“Messaging Feature”).
We may also receive personal information when you purchase tickets or make other requests to Shopify via any of our websites.
From telephone support users, we collect your phone number, call audio, and other personal information you provide us during our call. Pursuant to our Terms of Service, we may request additional documentation from you during our call to verify your identity.
From chat support users, we collect your name, email address, information about the device and browser you use, your network connection, your IP address, chat transcript, and other personal information you provide us during our chat. Pursuant to our Terms of Service, we may request additional documentation from you during our chat to verify your identity.
From forum users, we collect your name, email address, website URL, and other personal information you may post.
We use this information to verify your account, to provide and enhance our Services (including supporting or servicing your account, if applicable), and answer any questions you may have.
What is a cookie? A cookie is a small amount of data, which may include a unique identifier. Cookies are sent to your browser from a website and stored on your device. We assign a different cookie to each device that accesses our website.
We use cookies to recognize your device and provide you with a personalized experience on our websites, or otherwise through the Services. We also use cookies as part of the Services, for example to operate the shopping cart for our merchants’ stores. Read more about how we use cookies on our sites and our merchants’ sites in our Cookie Policy.
We use cookies to serve targeted ads from Google, Facebook, Bing, SourceKnowledge, and other third-party vendors. We also use cookies, and other information from your browser and/or device to provide you with personalized advertising, ad delivery, and reporting across multiple sessions and devices.
Our third-party advertising partners use cookies to track your prior visits to our websites and elsewhere on the Internet in order to serve you targeted ads. For more information about targeted or behavioral advertising, please visithttps://www.networkadvertising.org/understanding-online-advertising.
Opting out: You can opt out of targeted ads served via specific third party vendors by visiting the Digital Advertising Alliance’s Opt-Out page or the Network Advertising Initiative’s Opt-Out page.
We may also use web beacons, software development kits, and other automated tracking methods on our websites, in communications with you, and in our products and services, to measure performance and engagement.
Please note that because there is no consistent industry understanding of how to respond to “Do Not Track” signals, we do not alter our data collection and usage practices when we detect such a signal from your browser.
In general, we keep your personal information throughout your relationship with us. For merchants, this means we will keep your information as long as you maintain a store on your platform. For partners, this means we will keep your information until you inform us that you wish to terminate your partner relationship with us. For our merchants’ customers, we generally process your information solely as a data processor on behalf of our merchants, and it is up to the merchant to determine how long they will store your information in our systems.
Shopify acts as a data processor on behalf of our merchants, except where personal data of merchants’ customers is used for the purposes specified for us in Section 3 ‘What do we use this data for?’ Purposes include for risk and fraud screening.
Once you terminate your relationship with us, we generally will continue to store archived copies of your personal information for legitimate business purposes such as to defend a contractual claim or for audit purposes and to comply with the law, except when we receive a valid erasure request, or, if you are a merchant, you terminate your account and your personal information is purged pursuant to our standard purge process.
If you use Shopify Pay, we keep your information as long as your Shopify Pay account remains active. If you would like to delete your Shopify Pay account, and for us to delete all of your personal information stored in connection with that account, please use the “Opt Out” toolbar at the bottom of our Shopify Pay website.
We will continue to store anonymous or anonymized information, such as website visits, without identifiers, in order to improve our Services.
We do not and will never share, disclose, sell, rent, or otherwise provide personal information to other companies (other than to specific Shopify merchants you are interacting with, or to third party apps or service providers being used by those merchants if you are a consumer, or Partners that you hire if you are a merchant) for the marketing of their own products or services.
If you are a merchant using Shopify’s Services, we do not use the personal information we collect from you or your customers to independently contact or market to your customers. However, Shopify may contact or market to your customers if we obtain their information from another source, such as from the customers themselves (for example, if they use Shopify consumer-facing services like Arrive or Shopify Pay).
We follow industry standards on information security management to safeguard sensitive information, such as financial information, intellectual property, employee details and any other personal information entrusted to us. Our information security systems apply to people, processes and information technology systems on a risk management basis.
We perform annual audits to ensure our handling of your credit card information aligns with industry guidelines. We are certified as a PCI DSS Level 1 compliant service provider, which is the highest level of compliance available, and our platform is audited annually by a third-party qualified security assessor.
No method of transmission over the Internet, or method of electronic storage, is 100% secure. Therefore, we cannot guarantee the absolute security of your personal information.
Shopify works with merchants and users around the world, including in the EEA. If you are located in the EEA, your personal information is processed by Shopify’s Irish affiliate, Shopify International Ltd. As part of our service, we may transfer your personal information to other regions, including to Canada and the United States. In order to ensure that your information is protected when transferred out of the EEA, Shopify relies on the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield (described in more detail below), as well as inter-company agreements between our various affiliates that may process your information on behalf of Shopify International Ltd.
If you are located in the EEA, you have certain rights under European law with respect to your personal data, including the right to request access to, correct, amend, delete, port to another service provider, or object to certain uses of your personal data. If you are a merchant, a partner, a visitor of Shopify’s websites, or a user of Shopify’s support services and wish to exercise these rights, please reach out to us using the contact information below. If you are a customer of a merchant who uses Shopify’s platform and wish to exercise these rights, please contact the merchants you interacted with directly -- we serve as a processor on their behalf, and can only forward your request to them to allow them to respond.
If you are unhappy with the response that you receive from us we hope that you would contact us to resolve the issue but you also have the right to lodge a complaint with the relevant data protection authority in your jurisdiction at any time.
Additionally, if you are located in the EEA, we note that we are generally processing your information in order to fulfill contracts we might have with you (for example if you make an order through the Site), or otherwise to pursue our legitimate business interests listed above, unless we are required by law to obtain your consent for a particular processing operation. In particular we process your personal data to pursue the following legitimate interests, either for ourselves, our merchants, our partners, or other third parties (including our merchants’ customers):
To provide merchants and others with our services and applications;
To prevent risk and fraud on our platform;
To provide communications, marketing, and advertising;
To provide reporting and analytics;
To help merchants find and integrate with apps through our app store;
To provide troubleshooting, support services, or to answer questions;
To test out features or additional services; and
To improve our services, applications, and websites.
When we process personal information to pursue these legitimate interests, we do so where we believe the nature of the processing, the information being processed, and the technical and organisational measures employed to protect that information can help mitigate the risks to the data subject.
While Shopify Inc. is a Canadian company, we provide services to individuals and our technology processes data from users around the world. Accordingly, Shopify may transmit your personal information outside of the country, state, or province in which you are located.
Shopify (specifically Shopify’s affiliates Shopify Data Processing (USA) Inc., Shopify Payments (USA) Inc., and Shopify (USA) Inc.) complies with the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework, regarding the collection, use, and retention of personal information from data subjects in the European Economic Area (“EEA”), and with the Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework regarding the collection, use and retention of personal information from data subjects in Switzerland. In this regard, we have certified that we adhere to the Privacy Shield Principles of notice, choice, accountability for onward transfers, security, data integrity and purpose limitation, access, recourse, enforcement and liability.
If you are located in the EEA or in Switzerland, and believe that your personal information has been used in a manner that is not consistent with the relevant privacy policies listed above, please contact us using the information below. If your complaint or dispute remains unresolved, you may also contact the International Centre for Dispute Resolution®, the international division of the American Arbitration Association® (ICDR/AAA). This organization provides independent dispute resolution services, at no charge to you. ICDR/AAA can be contacted at http://go.adr.org/privacyshield.html.
If, after attempting to resolve a dispute through ICDR/AAA, you feel that your concerns about the use of your personal information have not been resolved, you may seek resolution of the issue through binding arbitration. For more information about the binding arbitration process, please visit http://www.privacyshield.gov.
By participating in the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework and the Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework, Shopify’s participating U.S. entities are subject to the investigatory and enforcement powers of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. For more information about the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield and the Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield, please visit https://www.privacyshield.gov. You can view Shopify’s certification statement at https://www.privacyshield.gov/participant?id=a2zt0000000TNSNAA4&status=Active.
In the course of offering our services, Shopify uses a number of machine learning algorithms and forms of automated decision-making. For example, we use automated decision-making: to prevent risk and fraud by merchants; to help merchants avoid fraudulent transactions from their customers; to personalize merchants’ experience when they use our admin and app store; and to determine eligibility for certain services (like Shopify Capital).
Most of these algorithms (excluding the personalization features and a subset of customer risk/fraud screening, discussed in more detail below) are not fully automated and include some human intervention (for example, customer risk and fraud scores are provided to merchants, who must intentionally decide how to act on them). Our personalization algorithms are fully automated, but only affect display features like how apps in the app store are presented to you. Similarly, we have a small subset of fully automated fraud screening blacklists, which, if we believe a transaction was made using stolen or fraudulent payment information, may stop a customer from completing a transaction--but only for a period of between a few hours and a few days.
Shopify understands that you have rights over your personal information, and takes reasonable steps to allow you to access, correct, amend, delete, port, or limit the use of your personal information. If you are a merchant or a partner, you can update many types of personal information, such as payment or contact information, directly within your account settings. If you are unable to change your personal information within your account settings, or if you are concerned about data collected as you visit Shopify’s websites or use our support services, please contact us to make the required changes. If you are a merchant’s customer and wish to exercise these rights, please contact the merchants you interacted with directly -- we serve as a processor on their behalf, and can only forward your request to them to allow them to respond. It’s important to remember that if you delete or limit the use of your personal information, the Services may not function properly. Additionally, if you use Shopify Pay and would like to have your personal information erased, please use the “Opt Out” tool at the bottom of the Shopify Pay website.
If you have any questions about your personal information or this policy, or if you would like to make a complaint about how Shopify processes your personal data, please contact Shopify by email at privacy@shopify.com, or by using the contact details below.
If you would like to make a legal request, or serve a subpoena or similar document seeking information about our merchants, their stores, or other parties whose data we process, please review our Guidelines for Legal Requests.
Residents outside of the European Economic Area:
Shopify Inc.
Attn: Chief Privacy Officer
150 Elgin St., 8th Fl
Ottawa, ON K2P 1L4
Canada
Residents of the European Economic Area:
Shopify International Limited
Attn: Data Protection Officer
c/o Intertrust Ireland
2nd Floor 1-2 Victoria Buildings
Haddington Road
Dublin 4, D04 XN32
Ireland
Last updated: March 15, 2019
© 2019 Shopify Inc.
