It seems like everyone’s starting a subscription business. Companies have been selling everything from coffee to Coca-Cola to Xboxes via subscription, and now even Shopify is getting in on the action. Yesterday, the Canadian e-commerce platform announced it would be rolling out new features to let Shopify merchants charge their customers on an ongoing basis for recurring services.
As David H. Freedman wrote in Marker, Shopify has been a lifeline for many Main Street businesses that had to pivot overnight to e-commerce during the pandemic. And now they’ll presumably be able to get some of that sweet, sweet recurring revenue. But Shopify has grander ambitions, with its sights set on challenging Amazon’s marketplace for third-party sellers. So it makes sense that Shopify would help its merchants offer subscription pricing. After all, Amazon rolled out its “subscribe and save” button — in 2007.
