I’ve been unable to properly use Shopify Payments for approximately one week after following Shopify Support’s instructions to change my business from Individual to a Single Member LLC.
I was told to deactivate Shopify Payments, submitted my LLC and EIN documentation, and Shopify made the entity change. However, it now appears my account may have been set up as a Private Corporation instead of a Single Member LLC, and the TIN verification is failing.
I’ve already:
Worked through the existing email support case
Waited about a week
Contacted three Shopify Support agents today
Asked for escalation, but still have no resolution
Has anyone dealt with this before, or does anyone know how to get this escalated directly to the Shopify Payments Verification / Account team that can manually correct the entity type?
This is now a business-impacting payment outage, so any guidance on a real escalation path would be greatly appreciated.
I’d probably ask Shopify Support for a manual review of the Shopify Payments account. Since the business details and EIN have already been updated, it sounds like there could be a verification or entity-type mismatch. Sharing the ticket number and the exact status shown in Shopify Payments may help them get to the issue faster.
Thanks Lucas…I’ve tried that. Its the wait which is frustrating when they take 3+days to reply to each update, especially when the error is on their end. I was so excited to launch last week and am now stuck…
Hi @vijayjai completely understand the frustration, especially when you’ve already launched and are being held back by this issue. If you’re open to it, I’d be happy to take a quick look and see if I can help identify what’s causing it. Let me know, and I’ll be glad to help. Feel free to send a DM
Hi there @vijayjai
This seems more like an entity classification error, not an issue with your LLC documentation in its own right. I’d start by comparing the legal business name, entity type, EIN, and responsible party information exactly as it is on your irs documentation to what is currently displayed in shopify payments.
If the type of entity is wrong, don’t keep resubmitting documents, that will just prompt more verification attempts. Keep all your existing case history and log exactly what the mismatch is. You can also see if you can edit business information directly in Settings > Payments > Shopify Payments.
The TIN failure is probably a symptom, not a separate problem. Tax classification determines which name/TIN pair gets checked — a single-member LLC and a private corporation aren’t validated the same way. If the account is sitting under the wrong classification, verification will keep failing no matter how many times you resubmit documents. Worth confirming that first, before sending anything else.
Two things I’d check:
1. The legal name has to match your EIN confirmation letter character for character. Punctuation, “LLC” vs “L.L.C.”, any trailing comma. A mismatch that looks trivial to a human fails an automated check.
2. Ask support explicitly to correct the entity type, not to re-review your documents. Those are different internal actions. If the request goes in as “please re-verify,” it loops back to the same failing check. Reference your case ID and put everything in one consolidated reply rather than several follow-ups.
Separately — and this is the part I’d act on today: turn on a backup gateway now. A week without card payments is the expensive part of this, and entity reviews can run longer than anyone tells you. Third-party gateways run alongside Shopify Payments, so setting one up doesn’t cancel your review or restart it. Even if it only carries you for two weeks, it stops the bleeding while the classification gets sorted.
What does your Shopify Payments status actually say right now — pending review, or fully deactivated? The answer changes which gateways you can activate.