Shopify Rolls Out AI Agent Connectors, Fraud Tools And Revamped Shopping Experience

Shopify has unveiled its Fall ’26 Edition, branded “Exponential,” introducing a raft of AI-powered features, agentic commerce tools and payment innovations aimed at simplifying operations for the millions of merchants on its platform.

The update spans the company’s commerce stack, from new connectors that let merchants manage their stores through AI chatbots to fraud protection tools that draw on signals across Shopify’s network of businesses. There are also changes to how consumers discover and buy products, including a new web presence for Shop and the ability for AI agents to act as personal shoppers.

Head of Enterprise ANZ at Shopify, James Johnson, pointed to the growing complexity facing Australian retailers.

“Customer expectations are rising, AI is changing how people discover and buy products, and businesses are under constant pressure to manage costs while finding new ways to grow,” Johnson explained.

“The challenge isn’t just keeping up with these changes, but being able to adapt quickly and take advantage of new opportunities. That’s where having everything connected makes a real difference.”

AI agents get direct access to Shopify stores

A central theme of the update is what Shopify calls “agentic commerce” – the idea that AI agents can act on behalf of both merchants and shoppers.

Shopify Connectors now allow merchants to link their stores to nine AI agents: ChatGPT, Claude, Claude Duet, Microsoft Copilot, Google Gemini, Grok, Grok Bot, Muse and Perplexity. Through these connections, merchants can manage products, inventory, orders and performance data without leaving the AI conversation.

The company has also introduced Shop.md, a skill file that turns any AI agent into a personal shopper. Consumers can point ChatGPT, Claude or another agent to the file, and the agent can then search more than a billion products and offer recommendations based on the shopper’s preferences and order history before completing purchases through Shop Pay. Developers can build on the Shop MCP at shop.dev without needing a key.

Shop Pay checkout is now available inside personal AI agents, starting with Muse from Meta, Claude Duet and Instinct. Claude Duet, Grok Bot and Instinct also offer Shop Pay for brands not on Shopify. More than 400 million people have Shop Pay accounts, and the security model carries over to agent purchases: the buyer remains in control, and their card is never shared with the agent. Shop Pay is secured with tokens from Mastercard, Visa and Discover for agent purchases from merchants not on Shopify.

Shopify’s VP of Product, Vanessa Lee, described the thinking behind the agentic push.

“For buyers, checkout is important, but not nearly as important as discovery,” Lee told media. “Getting rid of latency in the final purchase is a really important thing, but discovery is the bulk of what people want when they’re shopping agentically.”

“They’re shopping that way because they’re not window shopping. They’re doing a pointed search for a particular kind of product and know what they’re looking for. This is not perusing Instagram to get inspired. This is hunting.”

Merchant control over AI-facing information

Alongside the agent integrations, Shopify has built tools to give merchants control over what information AI agents can access about their stores.

A new Knowledge Base page, found under Sales channels > Agentic in the admin, lets merchants review and publish facts that agents receive about their business, including return policies, shipping destinations and gift services. Shopify drafts the initial content from the storefront, but nothing reaches an agent without the merchant’s sign-off.

A Catalog eligibility view in the admin shows whether a store qualifies for Shopify Catalog – the product database that AI agents draw from – and links to fixes for anything that needs addressing.

Lee addressed merchant concerns about losing customer relationships when sales happen through AI agents.

“The order is still the merchant’s. The customer relationship is still the merchant’s. That’s very important for us to protect,” she stressed.

“Any order that comes through an AI channel lands in the merchant’s admin with the customer’s name, email, and shipping details, just like any other sale.”

Sidekick gets technical capabilities

Shopify’s built-in AI assistant, Sidekick, has been rebuilt with expanded capabilities. It can now run calculations, write code, search the internet and remember information that merchants share with it. The company reported that daily Sidekick sessions have grown 4.2 times year over year.

A new feature called Canvas puts the entire online store into a single editable view, where merchants can work with Sidekick to make changes ranging from small tweaks to full redesigns. Canvas is now in early access.

Sidekick can also test proposed improvements using a feature called SimGym, staging multiple changes at once for merchant review before anything goes live. It now understands apps in a merchant’s stack and can draw on web research about their industry and market when making recommendations.

Lee outlined the long-term vision for the assistant.

“Probably the fact that Sidekick can identify areas of your business that are broken, suggest changes and help make them for you,” she offered, when asked what merchants will take for granted in five years.

“Being able to completely change your store in an hour, by just talking to Sidekick, is going to feel very normal soon.”

Shop gets a web presence and universal checkout

Shop, Shopify’s consumer-facing shopping platform, has launched Shop.com as a web destination featuring shoppable posts, editorial content and personalised sections for each shopper. The move is designed to bring Shop’s audience to the web, reaching shoppers who have not downloaded the mobile app. Shopify noted that web traffic to Shop is growing faster than traffic to the app.

A universal checkout feature now allows shoppers to add products from multiple merchants to a single cart in the Shop app and check out in one transaction. The checkout still respects each merchant’s individual extensions and validations.

Carts now sync between Shop and a merchant’s online store in both directions, so shoppers can pick up where they left off regardless of which platform they are using. Shoppers with Shop accounts also get their carts synced across devices and visits on a merchant’s online store.

Instagram content can now be connected to Shop, automatically syncing reels, images and carousels into shoppable content within the app. Merchants’ online branding and merchandising also automatically syncs to their Shop landing page, removing the need to rebuild it separately.

Fraud protection draws on network-wide signals

Shopify Protect is a collection of risk and dispute management tools that sit within the admin. Shopify Payments blocks more than 12,000 high-risk payments every minute across its network, at no additional cost to merchants.

Through the Shopify Protect Rule Builder, merchants can write and test their own fraud rules and backtest them against past orders. The system draws on signals from millions of businesses, so a card flagged on one store is already known when it appears at another. Shopify automatically blocks high-risk orders before payment is authorised at checkout.

For chargebacks, Shopify uses AI to generate dispute responses tailored to the customer’s bank and the specific reason code. The platform automatically attaches carrier proof of delivery when a customer claims an order did not arrive. Delivery photos from FedEx also appear on the order as evidence for dispute claims. Merchants have seen up to 1.6 times higher dispute win rates by category, according to Lee.

“We can recognise when the same card or address is used at different stores on Shopify, helping us spot fraud patterns across the network,” Lee explained. “So if they’ve attacked one store and go to another, we can deny them.”

The company reported that its fraud tools now deliver 60 per cent more wins on “product not received” disputes.

New payment methods and Australian additions

Seven new local payment methods have been added to Shopify Payments: Alipay, WeChat Pay, MB WAY, OXXO, Satispay, Scalapay and GrabPay. All work in online checkout, and most also work with Shop Pay, the Shop app and in person with Shopify POS. Satispay, Scalapay and GrabPay can also be used in-store on Shopify POS.

For Australian merchants specifically, more payout currencies are now available within Shopify Payments, allowing cross-border sales to land in the currency they were made in. Australian merchants can also now offer Shop Pay Installments, giving shoppers the option to pay over time with longer-term interest-free options without leaving the Shop Pay checkout. This feature is currently in early access.

Shopify Tax, a managed tax service for businesses new to the platform, calculates tax at checkout, collects it and remits it to the relevant authority. For US-based taxes, calculations are now based on the location each order ships from.

A redesigned payouts view organises pending and completed payouts by date with expandable details for each amount. Shopify Payments also uses machine learning to improve first-try approval rates for online payments in the US.

POS expands in-store customer recognition

Shopify’s point-of-sale system can now recognise more in-store customers by tapping into the company’s network of hundreds of millions of shoppers who have previously checked out at any store powered by Shopify Payments.

When a shopper selects a digital receipt and chooses to share their details, POS saves their information to a customer profile connected to the purchase. Shopify’s data indicates that a known in-store customer has more than 60 per cent higher lifetime value than an unknown one.

A new recent carts feature means a sale is no longer tied to one associate or one register. Any staff member can pick up and complete a sale from any device, with all details intact through shift changes.

Lee highlighted the value of in-store recognition.

“Even if it’s my first time shopping at your retail store, if I have shopped with another Shopify merchant in the past, POS will know me and give me the option to share my information and get a digital receipt,” she noted.

“Knowing who’s shopping in-store lets a merchant personalise the experience, market to them, and give them a reason to return.”

Other POS additions include fewer taps for cash and split payments, faster receipt flows, scheduled stock counts that can be set up in the admin and carried out on the POS floor, and the ability for authorised staff to pull up a known customer’s abandoned online cart and complete the sale in-store.

The network effect as competitive advantage

Lee framed the broader update around Shopify’s network effects – the idea that each merchant on the platform contributes to the value available to every other.

“Every merchant that joins Shopify benefits from every other merchant that has ever been on Shopify,” Lee remarked. “And they make it better for whoever comes next.”

She argued that even the largest retailers cannot match the breadth of Shopify’s buyer profiles.

“Even the largest retailers in the world don’t have a complete picture of a shopper’s buying behaviour across millions of stores,” she observed. “Shoppers buy gifts over here, their everyday goods over here, their housewares over here and their clothing over here. Our buyer profiles are so rich, and honestly, no one else has them at that same breadth.”

Lee pointed to Shopify Inbox as one application of that data. The chat tool on a merchant’s storefront recognises shoppers who sign in with Shop and personalises recommendations, with recognised buyers converting at higher rates in Inbox chats.

Admin redesign and developer tools

The Shopify admin has received a visual overhaul with new colour, typography, spacing and icons across every page. Navigation has been reorganised into a collapsible side panel that holds search, notifications and the store picker. Sidekick is now accessible as a floating chat at the bottom of every page.

A rebuilt native mobile app for iOS and Android accompanies the admin refresh, with improved performance and navigation.

For developers, the edition introduces several agentic commerce primitives. WebMCP tools allow agents to discover products, create carts and guide shoppers through checkout using structured tools registered by online stores. The Catalog API now includes products from businesses not on Shopify, and developers can add Shop Pay to any app or shopping experience they build.

A refreshed Dev Dashboard consolidates app building, monitoring, billing and payouts into one interface. Shopify CLI has been optimised for non-interactive input and output, meaning agents can create, list and delete dev stores from the command line.

On security, a new app security checking feature lets developers find vulnerabilities with a single prompt and work with their AI agent to fix them. App names must now be unique in the Shopify App Store, and IP address restrictions can be set to control which addresses make API calls for each app.

Lee identified the Catalog API as the standout opportunity for developers.

“Hands down, building for Catalog,” she stated. “You can search over a billion products from Shopify merchants, with current prices and inventory, and now products from brands that don’t sell on Shopify, too. When a shopper signs in with Shop, the results are personalised to them, and no other API can do that.”

Campaign automation and marketing

Campaign Autopilot, Shopify’s AI-powered marketing tool, has been rolled out to every merchant on the platform. It now supports campaigns across Microsoft Advertising, Snapchat and X Ads, alongside existing channels. SEO capabilities have been added. Merchants set their budget, approve content before it goes live and can adjust at any time.

Shop Campaigns has expanded to more than 35 new markets, including the UK, Australia and the EU. Merchants pay only when an ad drives a sale. Shopify reported that Shop Campaigns has led to more than 18 million sales for businesses.

WhatsApp marketing consent can now be collected from customers at checkout, and automated WhatsApp messages can be sent through Shopify Messaging to recover lost sales from product browse, cart and checkout abandonment.

Fulfilment and shipping updates

Shop Promise, a free programme for eligible US stores, shows badges on qualifying products highlighting trusted delivery and returns. Merchant eligibility has grown 20 times, and products with the badge can rank higher in Shop app search and in the Shopify Catalog data that shopping agents use.

DHL Express labels are now available in the admin for businesses in the UK, France, Italy, Germany and Spain. Canadian merchants can buy UPS labels for international orders, with customs documents created automatically. DHL eCommerce labels are now available for businesses in the Netherlands and Poland.

A new shipping-in-markets feature allows merchants to set up and manage shipping options for each region or company location. Package dimensions can be set for each variant, with default packaging selections.

Native stock counts let merchants schedule counts by store, scan barcodes or input manually, and maintain detailed inventory logs in both the admin and POS.

Lee described the broader philosophy behind the edition.

“If I look at all the features we’ve built that a small business will want, we’re taking all of these advantages that come from being with Shopify and trying to make them accessible,” she commented.

“You’re still in the control seat. You’re still able to express your brand and your identity, but you can do it a lot more efficiently.”

Last Updated on November 2, 2026 by Nick Ross