Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for our annual general meeting of shareholders. Our team and employees work remotely in a digital by design model, so we are pleased to host today's meeting through this virtual platform here. This allows all our shareholders, regardless of physical location or mobility challenges, to participate and to vote. Our annual meeting of shareholders is now open. Mike Johnson, our Corporate Secretary, will act as Chair and Secretary of this meeting. Mike, please take it away.
Thank you, Toby. Good morning. My name is Mike Johnson, and I am the Corporate Secretary of Shopify. We will conduct the business portion of our meeting first and answer questions on the proposals at the end of the meeting. We will address questions in accordance with our meeting protocol. Related questions may be grouped, summarized, or answered together, and we will only address questions that are relevant to the proposals being voted on today. Please note that this meeting is being recorded. I would like to point out that the discussion during today's meeting may contain forward-looking statements that are based on assumptions and subject to important risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. The details of our caution regarding forward-looking statements are on the current slide and can also be found in our public disclosures.
The notice of meeting was mailed to shareholders of record as of April 21, 2025. The matters to be considered at today's meeting are set out in the notice of meeting and management information circular, which are also available on the investors' section of Shopify's website and on SEDAR+ and EDGAR. We have confirmation from Broadridge that all shareholders entitled to vote at this meeting have been sent the notice of meeting, a form of proxy, and have received a copy of or been provided access to the management information circular, and that all shareholders entitled to vote at this meeting have been sent Shopify's consolidated financial statements or been provided access to them. We direct that a copy of each of these documents, along with the affidavit of Broadridge Financial Solutions, be kept by the Secretary in the records of the company.
Accordingly, I'll dispense with the reading of the notice of meeting, and we will now proceed with the business of the meeting. I would like to start today by introducing the members of management who are joining us: Toby Lütke, our Chief Executive Officer; Jeff Hoffmeister, our Chief Financial Officer; Harley Finkelstein, our President; and Jess Hertz, our General Counsel. We are also joined by members of our Board of Directors: Robert Ashe, our lead independent director, chair of our nominating and corporate governance committee, and member of our audit committee and compensation and talent management committee. Rob will be stepping down from the Board following this meeting. Gail Goodman, chair of our compensation and talent management committee and member of our audit committee; and Prashant Mahendra Raja, chair of our audit committee. Also joining us from the board are Jeremy Levine, Lulu Cheng Mesri, and Toby Shannon.
PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, Shopify's auditors, are also in attendance. Also with us today are representatives from Broadridge Financial Solutions, whom I appoint as the scrutineers of this meeting. Shopify's bylaws provide that a quorum of shareholders is present at a meeting of shareholders if the holders of not less than 25% of the shares entitled to vote at the meeting are present or represented by proxy, irrespective of the number of persons actually present at the meeting. I am pleased to announce that there are present by proxy a sufficient number of voting shares to constitute a quorum. Accordingly, this meeting is regularly called and properly constituted for the transaction of all business for which it is called.
Each Class A subordinate voting share confers upon its holder one vote on all matters before the meeting, and each Class B multiple voting share confers upon its holder 10 votes on all matters before the meeting. The founder share provides a variable number of votes that represent, when combined with other voting shares owned or controlled by our CEO, his immediate family and affiliates, not less than 40% and not more than 49.9% of the aggregate voting power attached to all of Shopify's outstanding voting shares. Further information about the founder share is provided in Section 1, Voting Information, of Shopify's management information circular under the paragraph heading, Voting Securities and Principal Shareholders. Approval of the resolutions before this meeting will require the affirmative vote of a majority of the votes cast by shareholders, voting together as a single class, present or represented by proxy at this meeting.
I'm advised by the scrutineers that, based on the preliminary tabulation of proxies received, more than a majority of the votes attaching to the shares conferring the right to vote at the meeting will be voted in favor of: one, the election of the director nominees presented in the proxy circular; two, the reappointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP as the auditors of Shopify; and three, the non-binding advisory resolution on Shopify's approach to executive compensation. All matters will be conducted by online ballot. Proxy holders and registered shareholders who are attending this meeting and have not previously provided us with their proxies have the ability to vote by online ballot for each item on the agenda. The ballots will be open for all resolutions at the same time.
This allows you to choose to vote on each resolution immediately or wait until the conclusion of discussion on each resolution before casting your vote. Once discussion on all items of business has concluded, I will give you a few moments to enter your votes and then declare voting closed on all resolutions. Please keep in mind that if you have already submitted your vote by proxy, submitting an online ballot will revoke and replace your prior vote. If you have already voted or sent in your proxy, you do not need to take any further action. Management's proxy nominees have voted all proxies appointing them as proxy holders. The casting of the online ballot results in the approval of all matters put before this meeting, notwithstanding the ballot being taken.
Therefore, as Chair of this meeting, for any motion which I determine that there are enough votes to carry the motion, we intend to declare the motion carried. Rather than delay the business of the meeting to wait for the final tabulation of votes cast, the results of the ballot will be included in the minutes of this meeting and will also be filed on SEDAR+ and EDGAR. The formal scrutineer's report will form part of the records of this meeting. I now declare the ballots open on all resolutions. The first item on the agenda for today's meeting relates to the receipt of Shopify's consolidated financial statements for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2024, and the related auditor's report.
The financial statements and the auditor's report were delivered pursuant to notice and access to all shareholders or mailed if requested, and were also made available on Shopify's website and on SEDAR+ and EDGAR. Shareholders have had the opportunity to review the financial statements and the auditor's report. We will include the financial statements and related auditor's report in the minutes of this meeting. Moving on now to the proposals being voted on today. The first proposal is the election of Shopify's directors. Our management information circular sets out the list of 10 nominees for election to the Board of Directors. Each of the nominees has confirmed that he or she is prepared to serve as a director of Shopify and qualifies as a director under Shopify's bylaws. All nominees, with the exception of Joe Natali, are currently members of our Board of Directors.
The nominees standing for election as directors are the following: Tobias Lütke, Lulu Cheng Mesri, Gail Goodman, David Heinemeier Hansson, Jeremy Levine, Prashant Mahendra Raja, Joe Natali, Kevin Scott, Toby Shannon, and Fidji Simo. As the company has adopted an advance notice bylaw and no nominations were received under that bylaw, I declare the nominations closed. The affirmative vote required for electing each of the proposed director nominees is a majority of the votes cast by shareholders, voting together as a single class, present or represented by proxy at this meeting. The term of office of the directors will be from today until the next annual meeting of shareholders or until such time as their successors have been duly elected or appointed. I now move to elect each of the nominees. Registered shareholders and proxy holders entitled to vote may now access their online ballots.
If you have not already voted, please use your online ballot. If you have already submitted your vote by proxy, submitting an online ballot will revoke and replace your prior vote. You may vote for or against in respect of each individual nominee as indicated on the online ballot. If you have not already voted, please record your votes now. The second proposal is the reappointment of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, Chartered Professional Accountants, as the auditors of Shopify to hold office until the next annual meeting of shareholders or until a successor is appointed, and that the directors be authorized to fix their remuneration. You may vote for or withhold in respect of this motion as indicated on the online ballot. If you have not already voted, please record your vote now.
We will now move to the third and final item on the ballot, which is a non-binding advisory resolution on the company's approach to executive compensation. Approval of this resolution will require the affirmative vote of a majority of the votes cast by shareholders, voting together as a single class, present or represented by proxy at this meeting. Since this is an advisory vote, the votes will not be binding. However, the Board and the compensation and talent management committee will take the results into account when considering future compensation policies, procedures, and decisions in determining our approach to engagement with shareholders on compensation and related matters. The text of the advisory resolution is set out on page 24 of the management information circular. You may vote for or against in respect of this motion as indicated on the online ballot.
If you have not already voted, please record your vote now. For those of you who have not voted on all of the resolutions, please do so now. I will close the polls on all resolutions in a moment. The polls are now closed. I'm advised by the scrutineers that, based on the preliminary tabulation of proxies received, all resolutions have been approved by the required number of votes cast at the meeting. Accordingly, I declare that the motions are carried and hereby approved. This concludes all matters before the meeting, and I now declare this annual meeting closed. Thanks to everyone who joined us this morning. Shopify's Chief Financial Officer, Jeff Hoffmeister, will now present an overview of Shopify's key accomplishments in 2024 and the first half of 2025. This presentation will be followed by the question-and-answer portion of the meeting.
Hello everyone, and thank you for joining us. Let me quickly revisit all that we accomplished last year, which was an outstanding year across the board, and then discuss what we've accomplished during the first half of 2025. In 2024, we executed with incredible discipline, just as we said we would, and maintained a rapid pace of product innovation. We continued to expand our global reach and scale, coming in just shy of $300 billion in GMV and $9 billion in revenue for the year. Our dedication to making entrepreneurship more common and helping merchants of all sizes thrive has established Shopify as a go-to platform across all corners of commerce. Shopify's growth is testament to the power of entrepreneurship. From local startups making their first sale to global brands like Reebok, Barnes & Noble, and BarkBox, generating hundreds of millions in GMV, merchants are choosing Shopify to power their businesses. In the U.S.
Alone, Shopify now commands over 12% of the e-commerce market. Some data points that highlight the strength of our 2024 results. North American revenue grew 23%. Our growth outside North America was even stronger, 33% for the year. With two consecutive years of international growth exceeding 30%, we are driving rapid growth at scale as we continue to expand our global presence. In offline, we grew revenue 33% for the year while also crossing $100 billion in cumulative offline GMV processed on Shopify. What is even more impressive about these growth numbers is we did it while managing our operating expense growth to deliver an incredible milestone for Shopify. Our operating income surpassed $1 billion for the year. On top of that, our free cash flow margin expanded to 18%, up from 13% in 2023.
We also hit some major milestones in 2024 that demonstrate our scale and continued momentum. Over 875 million consumers bought something from Shopify's merchants' online stores. That is essentially one in every six internet users. We passed a massive milestone crossing the $1 trillion mark for cumulative GMV that has been processed through Shopify. We now have hundreds of millions of ShopPay users, with ShopPay GMV growing 50% year- over- year. From a product perspective in 2024, Shopify continued to enhance its platform and solutions. Our offline business saw the introduction of tap-to-pay in multiple countries, Shopify Bundles, and robust order management features like ship-to-store, transforming retail locations into effective acquisition channels. We improved merchant automation with things like utilizing AI in Shopify Inbox to suggest quick replies based on store information, boosting conversion rates. We enhanced Shopify Flow with low-code automation triggers, adding 304 new actions for efficiency.
To support global cross-border commerce, we expanded the geographic availability of numerous products, including launching Shopify Tax in the U.K. and EU. Further to the point of helping our merchants succeed globally, we enhanced the buyer experience with new options and integrations such as UPS and managed markets, multi-currency payouts in Europe, Shopify plans in Japanese yen, and Klarna as a payment method to multiple countries in Europe. We introduced a streamlined markets feature in the admin, combining international selling and managed markets into a single efficient interface, allowing merchants to easily set up and customize new markets for cross-border, B2B, or retail selling without managing multiple stores or complex workflows. Our thriving partner ecosystem stands as a testament to our collaborative success, highlighted by new and expanded partnerships last year with Roblox, YouTube Shopping, and PayPal, among others, including the AI-powered search innovations that we launched with Perplexity.
Moreover, more than 3,000 new apps were added to our app store in 2024. Quickly touching on 2025, we have started off this year right where we left off in 2024: strong, executing, and consistently delivering for our merchants. With our recent Q1 results, which we announced just over a month ago, Q1 marks our eighth straight quarter of delivering pro forma revenue growth of 25% or greater, seventh consecutive quarter of GMV growth rate exceeding 20%, and seventh consecutive quarter of double-digit free cash flow margins. We are achieving growth across a diverse range of products, geographies, and merchant sizes and types, while maintaining disciplined expense management and making strategic investments to support Shopify's ongoing expansion and long-term growth objectives. In May, our latest editions released over 150 new features and updates, highlighting key enhancements driving growth in international and retail markets.
The Horizon Theme Foundation, featuring customizable theme blocks and AI-enhanced tools, empowers merchants to create dynamic, code-free storefronts with 10 innovative design presets, boosting international appeal. Multi-entity capabilities allow merchants to consolidate various business entities within a single store administration, simplifying global operations and regulatory compliance. Additionally, the redesigned Shopify Point of Sale offers faster service, improved navigation, and enhanced brand alignment. The ship-and-carry-out feature streamlines the shopping experience by enabling customers to purchase available stock immediately with remaining items shipped, supporting retail growth through increased in-store flexibility and efficiency. Beyond those highlights, Shopify has enhanced tools for cross-border trade and local commerce. We introduced country-based product filtering in the Shop App to support local businesses and improve buyer experience. Our duty calculation at checkout is now even more accessible, complemented by duty-inclusive pricing for transparent international transactions.
With the launch of tariffguide.ai, merchants gain quick access to duty rate information, optimizing product sourcing. Shopify Payments has expanded into 16 new markets, nearly doubling its reach to 39 countries, simplifying onboarding and enhancing payment security. Multi-currency payouts are now available in 20 European countries, enabling merchants to receive payments in their preferred currencies, essential for minimizing exchange rate impacts in global operations. Additionally, ShopPay Installments has been launched in early access in Canada, marking a milestone in our global expansion with plans to include more countries soon. Enhancements in Sidekick involve a reimagined AI engine for deeper reasoning capabilities, improved processing of larger business data sets, and language accessibility for all Shopify merchants, allowing them to use Sidekick in their preferred language. As the environment evolves, it becomes increasingly clear to businesses that they need a platform capable of adapting, scaling, and pivoting. Shopify is that platform.
Reflecting on 2024 and Q1 of 2025, we have achieved remarkable financial outcomes by delivering fast, reliable, unified software solutions to a growing global merchant base. Moving forward, we remain committed to disciplined growth, operational efficiency, and key investments in product development and marketing to foster entrepreneurship and advance global commerce. We deeply value your partnership and investment, and thank you for your continued support.
Thanks, Jeff. My name is Carrie Gillard, Head of Investor Relations for Shopify, and I will be moderating the Q&A portion of the meeting, so let's open it up. Please type in your questions in the Ask a Question box of the control panel on the meeting website. We will address questions in accordance with our meeting protocol and relevant to the business of the meeting. For questions read out loud, they may be grouped, summarized, or answered together, and we'll only address questions that are relevant to the proposals being voted on today. I will now pause to review and prepare any questions that we have received. As a reminder, we are only addressing questions that are relevant to the meeting proposals. To the extent we receive questions of an individual nature on other matters, we will review and respond after the meeting as appropriate. We have received a couple of questions. Our first question is on Proposal 2. How do you assess the objectivity and independence of the audit firm after a long tenure, and are you open to implementing a regular audit tender process, including potential firm rotation?
Thanks, Carrie. This is Mike Johnson, our Corporate Secretary. The audit committee assesses PwC's independence annually according to relevant accounting and regulatory standards. PwC has met these standards, and the committee believes they are providing appropriate and effective independent oversight. The audit committee has not implemented a tender process to date and does not have plans to do so.
Okay, great. Our next question is on Proposal 3. Would you consider incorporating performance-based long-term incentives as a part of the pay package for executive directors?
While performance-based incentives may be appropriate for some companies, they also have the potential to divert management attention away from emerging opportunities in favor of achieving short-term goals. Shopify operates in a rapidly changing business environment, and the Comp Committee believes it is imperative that Shopify's leadership is able to seize opportunities, drive innovation, and create long-term value and furtherance of our mission, rather than being singularly focused on a prescribed metric over the short term.
Our Comp Committee believes that time-based equity awards enable our executives to focus on executing long-term strategic initiatives, which is vital in such a dynamic industry. The future value of shares that our executive team receives pursuant to equity grants is related to value created for Shopify, aligning the goals of our executives with those of our shareholders. That said, this is a topic the Compensation Committee continues to review and consider as they look to design a competitive compensation program that sets Shopify up for long-term success.
There are no further questions related to the business of the meeting, so we will now conclude the question-and-answer portion of this meeting. On behalf of management, our Board of Directors, and everyone at Shopify, I would like to thank you for joining us today. We look forward to next year's meeting.
This concludes today's meeting. You may now disconnect.