I’m hoping someone has experienced this before because I’ve been stuck for over 3 months.
My Shopify Payments payouts have been paused because my account requires identity verification.
However, when I click “Verify identity”, the button spins for a few seconds, but the identity verification page never opens. There is no place for me to upload any documents or complete the verification process.
Over the past three months, I’ve contacted Shopify Support 7 different times. On multiple occasions, I was told that my case had been escalated to the internal team, but I never received any follow-up or resolution, and the issue remained exactly the same.
Today was the first time a support advisor investigated the issue in more detail. They confirmed that:
A verification session had been created, but no documents were submitted because the session never successfully launched.
The verification session is not launching correctly on Shopify’s side.
My case has been escalated to the Identity Verification Team.
The Identity Verification Team will reset or regenerate the verification session and send me a new working verification link.
What I’ve already tried
Contacted Shopify Support 7 times.
Used Chrome, Safari.
Tried Incognito / Private mode.
Tried different computers.
Cleared cache and cookies.
Disabled browser extensions.
Opened Developer Tools and checked the browser console and network requests.
The network requests complete successfully (HTTP 200), but the verification page never opens.
At this point, Shopify Support has confirmed that this is not a browser issue, but a problem with the verification session on their side.
Has anyone experienced this exact issue?
Did the Identity Verification Team reset your verification session?
How long did it take to receive a new verification link?
Did resetting the session resolve the issue?
I’d really appreciate hearing from anyone who has gone through this.
I’ll update this thread once I hear back from Shopify so it may help other merchants facing the same problem.
That detail from the last advisor is the most useful thing you have got, and I would push on it rather than opening an eighth ticket from scratch.
A session being created but never launching, with no documents submitted, points at the launch step failing in your browser rather than anything being wrong with your account or your documents. Which would explain the loop you are stuck in. Each time support escalates, someone creates a fresh session, your browser quietly fails to open it, and from their side it looks identical to a merchant who just never got around to finishing. Nobody is looking at the actual failure because the record on their end says session created.
Two things worth knowing. Verification does not only start from that button in admin, it can also be sent to you as a verification email with a direct link. If the in admin launcher is the thing that is broken, that link sidesteps it completely. When you go back to support, asking specifically for the verification email is a much smaller and more answerable request than another escalation.
The other one is that it usually has to be the store owner account that completes it. If you have been clicking that button while logged in as staff or on a collaborator account, it can fail quietly exactly like that. Worth checking which account you are actually in.
Before contacting them again I would also try it in a browser with no extensions at all, popups allowed and any ad or content blocker off, ideally not Safari. You will need a device with a camera anyway because there is a selfie and liveness step, so going at it straight from your phone is a reasonable shot.
One more thing to ask them, and I suspect nobody has checked it: whether you have hit the verification attempt limit. There is one, and three months of dead sessions could plausibly have eaten through it. If that is the case it needs resetting on their side before any link or button will work for you.
Which account were you clicking that button from, owner or staff?
Hi lumine, thank you so much for your help! Thanks for taking the time to think this through, I really appreciate it.
Most of the things you suggested are actually things I’ve already gone through with Shopify Support over the past three months. I’m logged in as the store owner, I’ve tried multiple browsers and devices (including my phone), disabled extensions, allowed pop-ups, used incognito mode, and support confirmed that I haven’t hit the verification attempt limit.
I also asked about a direct verification email, but they told me they can’t send one manually and that verification has to be launched from the Admin.
That’s what’s been so frustrating. Every advisor creates a new verification session, but the verification flow never actually opens, so I never even get the chance to submit any documents. I think the root issue is that the Verify button itself isn’t working. I’ve clicked it many times, but nothing happens, so the verification flow never starts. From their side it just looks like an incomplete session, and the cycle repeats.
I’m hoping they’ll eventually get someone from the engineering team to investigate why the session isn’t launching, because it doesn’t seem like the standard troubleshooting steps are getting us anywhere.
Do you happen to have any other ideas or know of anything else I could try? Thanks so much again!
Thanks for going through all of that, and it changes my answer. I had assumed the launch step was failing on your end, but if it behaves the same across multiple browsers, devices, incognito and your phone, then the client side explanation is dead. You have already ruled it out more thoroughly than support has. That is worth saying in the ticket in exactly those terms, because right now every advisor is starting from the assumption that you have not tried the basics, and you burn the whole conversation proving otherwise.
The one thing I would still do before the next contact is capture what the button actually does. Open the admin in Chrome, open developer tools, go to the Network tab, tick Preserve log, then click Verify identity. Something will fire and either fail or come back with an error. Screenshot that row with its status code, and anything red in the Console tab. That single screenshot is worth more than seven tickets of description, because it turns “nothing happens” into a specific failure that someone in engineering can actually look up. It sometimes also reveals the URL the session was meant to open at, and if that is there you may be able to open it directly instead of waiting on the button.
When you contact them again I would ask two narrow things rather than asking for a general escalation. Ask what state the verification session is sitting in on their side, not whether one was created. And ask them to attach your capture to the case. The distinction matters because a session that launched and is waiting on you looks identical in their notes to one that never launched at all, and so far nobody has had a reason to check which one yours is.
Has anyone actually told you what the session looks like on their side after they create it, or only that they created one?
I’m experiencing a very similar issue. My payouts have been paused for 12 days, and the “Verify identity” button in my admin does not launch anything.
The difference in my case is that Shopify Support has repeatedly confirmed that all requested documents are already on file, there are no outstanding actions required from me, and my Merchant Trust case is actively under review.
I’m a Shopify Plus merchant with nearly $200,000 in paused payouts, and I still have not received any direct response from Merchant Trust.
I’m trying to determine whether the broken verification button is a separate technical issue, a stale banner, or something that is actually blocking the review.
Has anyone had Shopify confirm that their documents were complete while this same broken verification notice remained visible?