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Shopify to Allow Merchants to Sell NFTs Directly Through Their Stores

One of the first Shopify merchants to offer NFTs will be the NBA’s Chicago Bulls.

Updated Sep 14, 2021, 1:31 p.m. Published Jul 26, 2021, 8:04 p.m.

Shopify President Harley Finkelstein said Monday his company is now allowing merchants on its platform to sell non-fungible tokens (NFT) directly to customers.

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In his tweets making the announcement, Finkelstein noted that before Shopify’s move, its merchants would have to sell NFTs through a third-party marketplace, forcing them to relinquish control of the sale and the customer relationship.

Before Shopify offered this capability, merchants would have to sell through a 3rd party marketplace aka less control of the sale and customer relationship. Once again we are putting the power back into the hands of merchants and meeting customers how and where they want to buy.
— Harley Finkelstein (@harleyf) July 26, 2021

“Once again we are putting the power back into the hands of merchants and meeting customers how and where they want to buy,” Finkelstein said.

One of the first Shopify merchants to offer NFTs will be the National Basketball Association's Chicago Bulls, which launched an NFT “Legacy Collection” on Monday featuring the franchise’s six world championship rings.

Shopify powers the e-commerce sites of over 1.7 million businesses around the world. The company's decision therefore potentially opens NFTs to much wider adoption.

UPDATE (July 28 020:30 UTC): Corrects spelling of Shopify president's first name.

Shopify NFTs

Nelson Wang

Nelson edits features and opinion stories and was previously CoinDesk’s U.S. News Editor for the East Coast. He has also been an editor at Unchained and DL News, and prior to working at CoinDesk, he was the technology stocks editor and consumer stocks editor at TheStreet. He has also held editing positions at Yahoo.com and Condé Nast Portfolio’s website, and was the content director for aMedia, an Asian American media company. Nelson grew up on Long Island, New York and went to Harvard College, earning a degree in Social Studies. He holds BTC, ETH and SOL above CoinDesk’s disclosure threshold of $1,000.