Platform downtime, Silicon Valley Bank shock, Shopify sellers have a hard week

It is learned that on March 13, the Shopify platform suddenly went down. Although the failure only lasted for a short time, many sellers reported that their store operations were still affected. In addition, since Shopify has financial transactions with Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), the bank's bankruptcy also had a certain impact on the platform merchants.

The platform suddenly "downtimes", and the seller's store is paralyzed

It is reported that at around 11 a.m. Eastern Time on March 13, Downdetector received thousands of reports about Shopify failures. Although the problems reported by sellers varied, they all affected store operations to some extent.

Of those reports, 64% reportedly complained about the site not opening, 27% pointed to issues connecting to Shopify’s servers, and the remaining 9% cited issues with logging in.

Some users said in Downdetector comments that they had problems loading images. Other problems included the inability to load the order status page of the shopping platform, slow checkout speed, and one seller even said that all four of his stores were paralyzed.

The outage is not common for Shopify, which has not reported any outages in at least two months. In addition, the outage mainly affects sellers in North America, including the United States and Canada.

Although the platform quickly fixed the problem, some sellers still reported that the images on the front desk could not be loaded and the listing editing templates on the back desk could not be downloaded. Some sellers also said that the store operated normally on the mobile phone, but could not be loaded on the PC.

The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank has affected Shopify and may affect the capital turnover of sellers

Since Shopify is one of Silicon Valley Bank's clients, many merchants began to worry about whether the bank's bankruptcy would affect their business. On the seller forum, some sellers are hesitating whether they need to temporarily close Shopify Payments.

Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke tweeted that a small portion of Shopify's U.S. operating cash flow was taken up by SVB. The content did not mention any impact on sellers and said the impact on the platform was very small.

Later, Lütke shared an email that Shopify sent to platform merchants on Monday, mentioning that it would provide assistance to merchants with SVB accounts who may have difficulties in paying wages. Although the email did not mention the issue of delayed payments, it does not mean that merchants will be completely unaffected.

Although the U.S. Treasury, the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation have urgently issued a "bottom-up" commitment to Silicon Valley Bank, the collapse of SVB still brings concerns to brand owners, who are unsure whether their funds can be safely guaranteed in the event of a collapse. At the same time, confidence in other banks may also be declining. According to a government statement, Signature Bank was also closed on Sunday and handed over to regulators.

Editor✎ Ashley/

Disclaimer: This article is copyrighted and may not be reproduced without permission.