Shopify taps Ramp to save on corporate expenses

Dive Brief:

Finance automation platform Ramp said that it has signed e-commerce company Shopify as a customer, according to a Tuesday press release.
Even though the deal was made public Tuesday, the two companies had been in talks since 2022, and the full deployment of the finance automation platform’s services to Shopify happened “earlier this year” according to an interview last week with Ramp CEO Eric Glyman.
“[We] tried to build a platform ourselves. But then we found Ramp, and we saw a system that had the features we needed,” said Shopify International Controller Phil Whitham in the press release.

Dive Insight:

As Shopify cuts back its workforce, it's turning to automation.

The Canadian e-commerce platform has been searching for ways to cut costs since July 2022, when it cut 10% of its workforce. A week later, it invested $100 million in a partnership with Klaviyo, an e-commerce automation company.

Shopify cut another 20% of employees in May, when it sold its logistics business to Flexport, an American supply chain firm. “We are at the dawn of the AI era,” Shopify founder and CEO Tobias Lütke said in a public memo addressing the cuts. “Shopify has the privilege of being amongst the companies with the best chances of using AI to help our customers.”

The integration with Ramp is expected to help Shopify further automate its operations, this time in the finance department. Ramp touts itself as a fintech that is concerned with saving businesses not just money but also time, Glyman said in last week’s interview. It is expected to help manage corporate cards and expense management for Shopify.

Ramp made its own investment in artificial intelligence last month when it purchased AI-powered customer support platform Cohere. It also recently launched a new product suite that uses AI for tasks such as filling in accounting categories, based on learnings from the customer base, to code transactions and speed up work.

In conjunction with the Shopify deal, Ramp also announced a new tier of offerings that will cater to the needs of larger clients.

For its part, Shopify said last week that it would offer its own pay in full business credit card, adding to its existing line of virtual and physical business spending debit cards.