Account in review by Shopify Merchant trust

Shopify Discussion

Topic summary

Multiple merchants report store reviews/suspensions by Shopify’s Merchant Trust Team, sometimes without prior notice, losing access (including domains). Stated reasons include a Section 7 Acceptable Use Policy violation (data privacy) or the business being flagged “high risk.”

Live support advisors say they can’t access Merchant Trust cases; merchants are told tickets are in queue. Reported wait times range from 2–3+ weeks to 1.5 months with limited updates.

Document requests to reassess eligibility commonly include: 1) proof of address, 2) proof of business association, 3) proof of inventory (supplier invoices/agreements), and 4) social media links or traffic explanations. Dropshipping/print‑on‑demand sellers are unsure how to provide “inventory” or supplier agreements. Some are confused about where to submit proofs, though the emails request replies with attachments.

Recent outcomes: a few stores were reopened after additional documentation, but Shopify Payments was disabled without context; alternative processors (e.g., Stripe) were sometimes also unavailable.

Guidance offered: reply to the Merchant Trust email, check admin banners, review Shopify Payments Terms of Service, and contact the Help Center to confirm the ticket is correctly queued; moderators can’t share account‑specific details.

Status: ongoing with unresolved concerns about response times, transparency of reasons, Shopify Payments eligibility, and acceptable documentation for dropshipping/POD.

Summarized with AI on December 15. AI used: gpt-5.
9

I have the exact same issue here, here’s how it happened:

  1. Store got shut down with NO notification through email or whatsoever.

  2. I reached out to Support team and they created a ticket, then escalated it to a different team.

  3. After the ticket has been created, I received an email from Merchant Trust team stating I need to provide these documents in order to reinstate my store:

  • Proof of address - Utility bill (e.g. water, electricity, or gas bill from the past 3 months), lease agreement (dated) or property insurance (dated)
  • Proof of business association (i.e. business license, business registration documents (with company number) or business tax filing record).
  • Proof of inventory (i.e. dated supplier invoices, dated manufacturing agreements)
  • Social media links related to your business (if none, please explain how are you driving traffic to your store)
  1. I provided all documents and stating my store was a dropshipping store in the Proof of inventory section.
  2. It’s been 3 weeks and there is no response back from the Merchant Trust Team regarding they received the documents or not, I have to make an effort to reach out to Support team and they confirmed that Merchant Trust Team has received my document and they are in queue, currently there is no estimated time of processing of the case due to high demand.

My personal opinion about Shopify Merchant Trust Team:

The way that the shut down the store, providing no context about what was the reason for it, no notification and no communication is absolutely not professional to me. I used to sell on Amazon and they make it very clear about every decision they take on the Merchant account, response was extremely fast. Very disappointed about Shopify, Shopify itself is great but the Merchant Trust team ruined our experience, we only started our store so there is little revenue lost worry about but this will cause future worries if this is going to happen again when our store start selling a lot.

Hope this message is going to reach someone in Shopify that has the power to make a change to Merchant Trust team for better service, I honestly don’t trust the current Merchant Trust team on my store incident.