Shopify Inc. announced that Kaz Nejatian, Vice President of Product, has been promoted to Chief Operating Officer, effective 08 September 2022. Nejatian succeeds Toby Shannan, who is retiring from his role at the company and is expected to join Shopify's Board of Directors, effective January 1, 2023. Shannan will serve as a special advisor through the end of the year.

Nejatian will remain VP of Product while undertaking his new role. As the Vice President of Product, Kaz Nejatian leads a cross-functional team that develops and delivers tools for entrepreneurs to supercharge their growth on Shopify. These products give independent merchants access to commerce innovations that have historically only been available to big businesses - think financial tools like Shopify Capital and Shopify Balance, integrations with the largest social platforms in the world, the internet's most powerful checkout in Shop Pay, Shopify Point of Sale, and much more.

Kaz's role at Shopify is the culmination of lifetime interests in entrepreneurship, finance, and technology. As the son of a small business owner (fun fact: Kaz's mother now runs her business on Shopify), Kaz was hacking credit card terminals by the age of 12. After working as a lawyer in his early career, Kaz parlayed his life interests into co-founding and serving as the CEO of Kash, a payment technology company.

Kash was one of the early players in giving small businesses access to mobile payments technology for brick-and-mortar stores, and was acquired in 2017 by one of the largest fintech companies in the U.S. Kaz then served as Product Lead for Payments and Billing at Facebook, reducing the barriers for businesses in cash-dependent markets to purchase digital ads without a credit card. Kaz is a graduate of Queen's University's School of Business and the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. Along with being a key player in making commerce better for everyone, he is also the proud father of three children.