TLDR
- Shopify processed $14.6 billion during Black Friday-Cyber Monday, up 27% from last year’s holiday weekend
- Cyber Monday outage knocked merchant admin tools and POS systems offline for up to five hours
- Black Friday peak traffic hit $5.1 million in transactions per minute across the platform
- Shares recovered from a 3.9% drop to post a 5.5% gain after strong sales data release
- More than 81 million customers shopped at Shopify-powered stores over the weekend
Shopify turned a potential disaster into a victory lap as record holiday sales numbers pushed shares higher.
The platform processed $14.6 billion in transactions from Black Friday through Cyber Monday. That represents a 27% increase compared to last year’s holiday period.
More than 81 million shoppers purchased from Shopify-powered merchants during the weekend. Black Friday alone saw transaction volumes peak at $5.1 million per minute.
But a Cyber Monday technical failure threatened to spoil the party. Merchant-facing systems crashed during peak shopping hours on one of the year’s busiest retail days.
Merchants Left Scrambling During Critical Hours
Shopify acknowledged on X that selected stores experienced backend system problems. Admin interfaces and point-of-sale terminals went dark for affected merchants.
Downdetector recorded about 4,000 users reporting issues around 11 a.m. Eastern time. The complaints dropped to a few hundred by early afternoon.
Myriam Belzile-Maguire of Maguire Shoes in Montreal watched her systems go offline around 9 a.m. They didn’t come back until 2:30 p.m.
“We were completely in trouble, especially on a day like today when there is a lot of traffic on our sites,” she said. Orders kept coming in, but her team couldn’t track inventory or monitor sales.
A Shopify spokesman noted that customer-facing storefronts remained operational. Shoppers could browse and buy without interruption while merchants dealt with blind spots.
Stock Whipsaws on Conflicting News
The outage news sent shares down 3.9% as investors worried about lost revenue. Some analysts had already expressed concerns that Black Friday growth might miss elevated expectations.
The stock reversed direction hard the next day. Shares jumped 5.5% after Shopify released its full holiday weekend numbers.
The 27% sales growth impressed investors even though some forecasts had predicted higher figures. The strong performance outweighed concerns about the technical problems.
Adobe projected $14.2 billion in total online spending for Cyber Monday across all platforms. That marked a 6.3% increase over the previous year.
E-Commerce Continues Taking Market Share
Online sales now account for 16.1% of total retail transactions in 2024. Last year that figure stood at 15.3%, according to Commerce Department data.
Black Friday foot traffic at physical stores dropped 2.1% year-over-year. Online spending the day after Thanksgiving reached $11.8 billion, up 9.1% from 2024.
Shopify confirmed by evening that all systems were back online. Merchants regained access to their full suite of tools and POS capabilities.
The stock trades at $158.26, up 47.2% since January. It sits 11.6% below the October 2025 peak of $179.01.
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