Shopify reported results for its fiscal Q2 2017 on Tuesday, and the numbers are strong: Revenue grew 75 percent year over year, and the company’s gross profit also grew 83 percent compared to the same quarter in 2016. Total revenue beat expectations from Wall Street at $151.7 million, and its subscription-based business grew to $71.6 million, driven by a record number of new merchants signing up for the platform.
That led Shopify to cross the 500,000 mark for merchants on its platform for the first time during the quarter, a user population that’s spread across 175 countries worldwide. Merchant growth has progressed at a pace of 74 percent on average since 2012, and Shopify puts total gross sales across those merchants at $40 billion throughout the company’s lifetime.
Some additional growth metric shared by Shopify alongside its results include a geographic breakdown of new user sign-ups in Q2, which include significant increases in multiple markets. Merchant sign-ups rose 56 percent in North America, 82 percent in Asia, 168 percent in South America and 70 percent in Africa. And to power those 500,000 stores, Shopify says 1.2 million individual users are engaging with the platform’s backend shop management software.
On the consumer side, 131 million people have made a purchase from a Shopify store within the last 12 months according to the company, and during last year’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday, merchants on the platform were collectively generating over $100,000 per minute in sales.
Shopify also kicked off general distribution of its new Chip and Swipe Reader hardware for physical sales, free to any merchants who haven’t yet redeemed a free reader. Also, the company’s CFO Russ Jones announced his intention to retire, once a replacement is found. The company expects to complete the replacement search process within the next year.