Shopify outage disrupts admin, POS and checkout systems during Cyber Monday

Shopify experienced a platform disruption on Cyber Monday that affected merchant logins, the admin dashboard, point-of-sale (POS) systems and checkout flows. The company reported degraded performance across multiple services and later identified and fixed an authentication issue that caused many merchants to be unable to access admin and POS systems.

According to Shopify’s status updates, some merchants saw problems logging in and processing POS checkouts, while API, mobile and support systems also experienced degraded performance. Shopify’s team deployed fixes and began monitoring recovery; many services showed signs of returning to normal within hours.

Timeline & official updates

• Initial reports: merchants unable to access Admin and POS, plus checkout disruptions and degraded API performance.
• Shopify status updates: company investigated the issue, applied mitigations and later fixed a login authentication flow causing the outages.
• Recovery: Shopify reported signs of recovery after the authentication fix and continued to monitor the systems.

Who was affected

Any merchant using Shopify’s platform could be impacted — from small shops to larger brands that rely on Shopify for storefronts and in-person POS. Shopify powers a significant slice of e-commerce, so outages can ripple across many online stores and in-person sales during peak shopping events.

Impact for shoppers and merchants

• Shoppers: you may have experienced errors at checkout, delayed confirmations, or inability to complete purchases on some stores. If you attempted to buy during the outage, check your bank/card statements and merchant emails for confirmation before re-ordering.
• Merchants: inability to access admin or POS can halt sales, prevent order processing and disrupt customer support. Merchants should follow Shopify status updates and contact payment providers or banks if payment captures were affected.

Practical tips

• If you saw checkout errors, wait a few minutes and retry — Shopify reported rolling recovery after fixes.
• Check your email and bank statements before repurchasing to avoid duplicate orders/charges.
• Merchants: monitor the Shopify status page for updates and contact your payment processor for any unsettled transactions.
• Consider alternative purchase channels (other retailers, direct brand sites) if a needed item remains unavailable on a Shopify storefront.

Shopify said it was continuing to monitor recovery after resolving the authentication issue. For live updates, refer to Shopify’s status page and the Shopify Support account for official notices.

Discussion: Did the outage affect any purchases you tried to make today? Share your experience — did orders go through, or did you face errors at checkout?