Shopify payments refusing to process for us but also not giving us any transfer information

Shopify Plus

Topic summary

Shopify Payments will stop processing this merchant’s transactions after 4/25 due to Stripe’s restrictions on supplements, but Shopify will not transfer subscriber payment tokens.

  • Core issue: The store has 10,000+ active subscription customers whose payments rely on Shop Pay “shop_pay_agreement” tokens. Shopify states these are billing tokens valid only within Shopify Payments and not transferable; Shopify does not store card numbers. By contrast, prior migrations from Authorize.net used portable “customer profiles” tokens.
  • Impact: Without token migration, all subscribers would need to re-enter payment details, likely causing major churn and a poor customer experience.
  • Attempts: The merchant has sought solutions from Shop Pay, Shopify Payments, Stripe, and Recharge but reports dead ends.
  • Definitions: Payment token/vaulting = a stored billing reference for recurring charges; Shopify’s vault only supports its own processor.

Status: Urgent and unresolved. Key open question: any viable method or precedent to migrate Shop Pay subscription tokens to a new processor without requiring customer action.

Summarized with AI on December 30. AI used: gpt-5.
1

Hello.

This is a very time sensitive issue. Because we sell supplements that Stripe restricts (for unknown reasons) we are being asked to migrate from shopify payments and they are refusing to charge for us after 4/25. In theory, that’s fine, we are happy to switch to a new payment provider. BUT they are also refusing to give payment tokens for our thousands of subscribing customers. We have migrated off of authorize.net before with no issues and the payment tokens are given. They specifically say subscribers who use Shop Pay will need to submit their payment information, which is more than ten thousand of our active subscribers.

"the shop_pay_agreement tokens will no longer be available and the buyer will need to update their vaulted payment method. This is because all that Shopify vaults is a billing token (which is only valid for Shopify Payments). Shopify does not have the credit card. For Authorize.net these tokens are called “Authorize.net customer profiles”. "

It seems that this payment token vaulting was set up to make it impossible to migrate off of their processor but they are also asking us to migrate off of their processor. Subscriptions are the majoroty of our business and this will be detrimental to us if not resolved.

They are saying that the only solution is to lose all of our customers payment information and permissions and ask all customers to update their payment information. This would eliminate the majority of our subscribers and be a very poor customer experience for the ones that remain.

Asking for help from anyone - Shop pay, shopify payments, stripe, recharge or anyone who has found a solution to this problem. We are finding dead ends everywhere.