Merchants report that Shop Pay automatically sends SMS verification codes to customers who enter their email at checkout, even when they haven’t selected Shop Pay as their payment method. This creates significant friction:
Core Issues:
Customers receive unsolicited text codes simply by entering their email address
Many interpret these codes as discount codes, scams, or required steps
Shop Pay auto-redirects returning users who previously clicked it once, bypassing other payment options
The “Continue as guest” link to exit Shop Pay is small and difficult to find
Elderly customers and less tech-savvy users find the process particularly confusing
Merchant Impact:
Multiple store owners report lost sales and customer complaints
Some customers believe they’re being forced into purchases or misled
Checkout abandonment has increased for affected stores
Several merchants have disabled Shop Pay entirely despite wanting to offer it as an option
Merchant Requests:
SMS codes should only send when customers actively click the Shop Pay express checkout button
Shop Pay should function as an opt-in choice, not a default
Better control over when Shop Pay activates
Ability to keep Shop Pay Installments while disabling automatic Shop Pay behavior
Shopify Response:
Support acknowledges this is expected behavior and offers to forward feedback to developers, but no changes have been implemented since the discussion began in 2021. The issue remains unresolved as of 2024, with merchants continuing to disable the feature.
Summarized with AI on November 4.
AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
My customer complained that when she logged in, ShopPay immediately provided her with a code.
Consequently, she entered the code, which then prompted her to place an order, despite her cart being empty. After entering the code, it implied that she had placed an order, displaying a delivery date as well. This occurrence has happened twice. Today, she requested a refund, claiming that my website/company is misleading.
According to her, she didn’t choose the items she purchased; ShopPay simply provided a code without requesting her card number (express checkout), and she wants a refund.
I’m perplexed about what’s happening here. This lady is my high-value customer who spends a lot on my website. I may have lost a few like her because of this. I don’t have evidence, but I noticed they started disappearing after I enabled ShopPay on my website. I run a small business and can’t afford to lose these kinds of customers.
How can I be accused of misleading customers when I haven’t issued codes for items they didn’t intend to purchase?
Does this relate to the concept of high conversion, coercing customers into buying items they didn’t choose?
I screenshot the refund. You may read the customer’s note below.
Thank you for sharing your customer’s feedback with us, @kuehlapisbymom ! I appreciate the concern. Hopefully we can clear up the process for the customer so they understand how Shop Pay works and are able to rebuild their trust in your store.
Do you have more information about the path that this customer took to get to your store? I’m trying to determine how they reached the checkout if they didn’t manually add anything to their cart.
Shop Pay prompts customers for their verification code once they have entered their email address at checkout. This means that the customer would have needed to add an item to their cart and proceed to checkout first. I’m wondering if maybe they had added an item to the cart while browsing the store at some point, forgot, and it was still there when they came back again later on.
They also would have needed to opt into Shop Pay, either by signing up through the Shop app, or by selecting “Save my information for a faster checkout” during a previous purchase. The checkbox at checkout looks like this:
Shop Pay does not save customer information without customers opting for it to do so. I understand that this customer may not have intended to sign up. If they don’t wish to use Shop Pay going forward, they can opt out here.
Hi Sophia, thank you for getting back to me. I’m a bit in the dark about the exact steps she took because she hasn’t reached out directly. Here’s what I do know—she ended up buying something unintentionally. Shop Pay handed her a code, and she punched it in, maybe thinking it was a discount voucher. Boom, next thing, items paid for. She might have expected Shop Pay to double-check with her for a credit card or some confirmation before sealing the deal. This led her to think the website was a bit misleading.
We’re both based in Singapore, where scams are rampant, particularly affecting individuals in their 50s and above. The fear of your credit card acting independently is genuine. I understand her perspective—whether she’s tech-savvy or not, even with express checkout, you should maintain control over your purchases. Let’s ensure this doesn’t happen again, especially to customers in the age group I mentioned earlier. If this issue persists, they may develop a phobia about purchasing online.
I understand. Thank you for sharing the additional feedback.
I want to clarify that entering your Shop Pay code does not finalize a purchase—it only pulls up your saved information so you don’t need to type it in again before checking out.
After entering a Shop Pay code, the customer will still have the checkout page in front of them, showing the item(s) in the cart, along with the subtotal, shipping and taxes if applicable, and the total. Shop Pay cannot make a purchase for a customer—they have to confirm the purchase by clicking the purple Pay now button.
I think everyone here is quite aware of how it works but instead of accepting that customers clearly are confused (as ours are and also as shown above other sites customers) Shopify insists on pushing their agenda and product. It is a product that works as an option NOT as a default. This is what people are really asking for I believe just not this automatic login and push for specific payments. We have removed from all our sites and have not had a single person ask for it nor have we had a reduction in sales and actually have had an increase in conversions. In my belief it is because without Shop Pay in its current state we now give customers the control but Shop Pay made customers feel they lost control of their payment info.
Thank you for sharing your suggestions! To clarify, can you provide more detail on why you’re entering customer emails at checkout? I’d like to make sure I understand your workflow so that I can provide full context when submitting a feature request.
I see lots of time has passed and this is even worse now. Sopify is trying to monopolize ecommerce and forcing shp pay on everyone. As everyone mentioned, shop pay button is there for express cehckout and ONLY if it is clicked should the text code to phone happen. As soon as I enter my email and I get that code thing, everything, even my payment methods are defaulted. What if I want to pay with Klarna? What if I decide on Paypal? Or other payment options that are avalaible? So custoemr has to somehow KNOW that they can scroll down to the very bottom and click on that super tiny link “Continue as guest” and that is what they need to do? That won’t happen, they are not going to spend more than a few seconds trying to figure htis out before they just leave.
NO wonder once I moved to shopify my checkout abandonment is so much higher than previously. I’m tempted to use another payment gateway but Shopify charges an extra 2% to their merchant fees, so it’s making people HAVE to use them. There used to be a selection under settings/checdkout to disable automatic customer accounts which meant all checkouts would be guest checkouts and that has been removed. Forcing their agenda even more. Look, we the merchants know how it’s supposed to work, but most customers that aren’t the most computer saavy will get frustrated and leave instead of hanging around trying to figure it out.
Oh I can keep shop pay as my merchant processor but still turn off shop pay feature? I didn’t think
of that. What sucks then the option will be removed from the quick part at the top so the choice is not there but worth a try. Thank you!
shopify please still look into this. Optimally the button should show and give the customer the option while not forcing it on them.
Yes … Settings > Payments > Shopify Payments click manage, uncheck Shop Pay. It does suck you loose the quick part, but I believe it makes for a much better shopping experience for customers.
@Sophia Is there any update? I also had to remove shoppay as customers find it annowing that as soon as they enter their email with the intention to choose a different payment method, Shopify hijacks their checkout and automatically applies shop pay, then they can’t figure out how to get out and leave. Sometimes it happens where their email is alrady entered when they go to checkout even when not signed into the account! So it feels a bit too stalkerish. When the customer feels like they have no control, it’s a turn off.
So, the shop pay button is under express checkout for a reason, it should be a CHOICE. Just entering their email shouldn’t designate them as having chosen it.
Most of my customers that have issues with this are elderly. The good news
is that Shopify has an obsolescence plan associated with Shop Pay. You see,
if they keep ignoring the issue, eventually all of the old people will die
and the new generation will take over, and they will have less friction
with it. It’s good to see that they have a long-term strategy and are not
just focused on the near term!
I’m not so sure. People like control. If you don’t intend to pay by ShopPay and you start getting texts from them when you sign in with your email address it feels like spam and extra effort. I had a ShopPay account and got rid of it because I got sick of the excessive texts I was getting when trying to shop on websites. ShopPay is a great idea, but it should only text when a customer is ready to checkout and selects it. If it did that, I would use ShopPay again.
If there were a way to still have installments set up and turn off ShopPay in general, I would have done it years ago. The text messaging annoys some customers and confuses others. Most customers don’t read why they’re receiving the text message and assume that it’s required to proceed, then they’re locked into this express checkout system that doesn’t show them the option that they want to use to pay. Some customers have net terms on our site that they can’t see when they’re logged in with ShopPay. Some customers want to pay with Amazon, or Venmo, or Paypal, or just use their credit card. A customer has to know that “checkout as guest” means that you want to exit ShopPay and go back to normal checkout, which is verbiage that’s confusing for customers who might think that they won’t be able to proceed and get their loyalty rewards if they are checking out as a “guest.” Overall, it needs to act more like Paypal and Amazon and just be an express payment option if customers choose to click the purple button, not a forced experience that results in unhappy customers and daily calls and emails to our customer service team.
This problem still isn’t solved, and I found this three years later looking for a way to turn off the code. A lot of our customers are people in their 50’s and 60’s and are the demographic that have no clue what shop pay is and accidentally signed up for it. We have lost sales because of shop pay, and for this reason, I’m going to have to turn it off. We had one guy who said he wanted to buy our stuff but he couldn’t pay with a credit card. It is very confusing to people who don’t know what it is or who are not particularly internet savvy. I would love to be able to offer it as an option, but our sales demographic absolutely doesn’t understand the code.
Exactly. I posted on this thread in 2021 and, if anything, Shopify has
increased emphasis on pushing people to Shop Pay. Our customer base is
similar to Sneiv, Kings4, and MCat7. They’re mostly Baby Boomers. Not all
of them are comfortable with complex Internet concepts like Shop, and many
are suspicious of receiving unsolicited text messages. But Shopify seems to
be designed by tech-savvy people who disregard the needs of older & less
tech-oriented people.
So our only solution, since 2021, has been to turn off Shop Pay and keep it
off. (Too bad, Shopify – we’re one of the bigger stores on this platform.)
There are times that simpler is better – and checkout is definitely one of
those times.
I am not saying anything new but I wanted to add that I agree with what is being said. The fact that is keeps auto sending a code and attempting to force them into Shop Pay is very frustrating to customers. In fact I am going to have to turn off the Shop Pay I believe because of this not being something we can fix. I want to make things easier for customers, but the auto login is making our customers have to do several additional steps (many of our customers are wholesale customers ordering for their schools - meaning they are going to be using their business card and probably not any personal credit cards they may have). Just wanted to add.
I just wanted to chime in that the same happened to our shop. I just got a very frustrated email from a customer who could not bypass the Captcha just to sign into his account on our store. He did not use the “Shop” app to purchase the product and could not get around it without it popping up every time. He was so frustrated, he wanted his money back.
We ended up disabling the Shop payment option and deleted the app in order to fix the issue. It’s kind of a shame for Shop as a company, and for people who like to use the app. I just wish it didn’t force non-Shop users and/or people who didn’t use it for purchases, to deal with it every time. I was a taken aback that this issue has been in the forums since 2021. There must be a better fix for this.
