You are solely responsible for making sure your store complies with all laws everywhere you sell — Shopify will not advise you on whether your activities are legal.
Merchants bear complete responsibility for cross-jurisdictional legal compliance with no guidance or safe harbor from Shopify, meaning that a store operating legally in one country but not another could face AUP termination with Shopify bearing no liability for resulting business losses.
Cross-platform context
See how other platforms handle Merchant Responsibility for Legal Compliance and similar clauses.
Compare across platforms →This provision shifts all legal compliance risk to the merchant, meaning Shopify bears no liability for a merchant's unlawful activities, and merchants cannot claim reliance on Shopify's approval of their store as a defense in regulatory proceedings.
REGULATORY FRAMEWORK: This provision operates as a contractual liability allocation clause and engages general principles of commercial contract law across all applicable jurisdictions. It is relevant to EU P2B Regulation (2019/1150) Article 3 transparency obligations, which require platforms to state the main parameters determining ranking and access in clear terms; the blanket liability shift may not fully satisfy P2B transparency requirements. It also engages EU DSA Article 14 on terms and conditions clarity and the UK Consumer Rights Act 2015 for B2C unfair terms provisions.
Compliance intelligence locked
Regulatory citations, enforcement risk, and due diligence action items.
Watcher: regulatory citations. Professional: full compliance memo.