I don’t understand how shopify is predatory. Shopify isn’t a merchant processor, they don’t hold merchant funds. Stripe is the merchant processor for shopify payments. They are the ones that froze the payments. Freezing money has no benefit for Shopify.
Grocery stores have been out of all sorts of products this year and the normal response isn’t “this is an outrageous failing of Kroger” it’s “Kroger isn’t able to source Wheat Thins because of various supply chain issues.” Same story with everything in the tech sector.
If you went to McDonald’s and they couldn’t process your order because Visa banned you then that’s not really on them. Or in a more individual level you probably don’t get told “well you should have picked a better car supplier” when you call off work because your car breaks down. Customers are also pretty understanding when shows or channels get yanked due to contract disputes.
The bigger issue seems to be that it wouldn’t have mattered who they went with and any financial institution would have yanked them after getting a chargeback from their bank.
Kroger is clearly selling someone else's product in wheat thins. Visa is not McDonaldsPay.
These examples are different from white labelling.
On the other hand, this book store hired Shopify, via ShopPay, to handle payments. The good and the bad now belong to Shopify. (I'm not claiming to judge fault)
> Grocery stores have been out of all sorts of products this year and the normal response isn’t “this is an outrageous failing of Kroger” it’s “Kroger isn’t able to source Wheat Thins because of various supply chain issues.”
There's a level of trust that you have to have with a service provider over something like a grocery store.
If you're at a grocery store, and your card is declined due to Visa blocking you, you did not lose out on money. If you're selling things on Shopify, and have shipped orders that you're expecting Shopify to pay you for and they do not pay you, there is now a loss involved.
I don't know how Shop Pay is engineered, but Shop Pay is Shopifys payment processing platform. I don't know if they're using another provider such as Stripe on the backend though or if they've gone through the PCI compliants.
With that said, just because you're not the one processing payments doesn't mean you're not the one holding it.
Shopify is one of Stripe's largest customers and a very heavy influencer of their roadmap (example: Stripe Treasury, BillPay (coming soon!), and more!)
