How To Transfer Shopify Store Ownership, Change To New Owner's Email Easily 2026

Log into the store's admin and you land on the Home dashboard, with the sidebar showing Orders, Products, Customers, Analytics, and further down, Settings. Ownership isn't managed from any storefront-facing section — it lives under Settings, so don't go looking near Billing or Plan even though those sit close by.

Inside Settings, click Users to see everyone with access to the store. On a single-person store this list shows just one row: you, marked Active with a role of Store owner that can't be edited or removed the way a regular staff account can.

This Users page is where you'd transfer ownership to someone who is already a staff account on your store. It is not the only way.

Shopify's own help documentation also describes a second path, under Settings > General in the "Transfer store" section, for handing the store to someone who has never had access to it at all — no staff invite required first. Pick whichever matches the new owner's situation before you continue.

The Users-page route only works once the new owner already exists as a user on your store. Use Add users on the Users screen to send a staff invitation to their email, and have them accept it and set up their login before you attempt the transfer.

If that extra round trip is not worth it, this is the point where the Settings > General > Transfer store option saves a step: choose "Transfer store to a new owner outside your business," confirm your identity, and enter their email directly. Shopify sends them an invitation to accept without ever making them a staff account first.

Using the Users-page route: once the new owner has accepted their staff invite, click Change ownership from their user page to open the Change store ownership dialog. It spells out what the role includes before you commit — the new owner can add or remove staff, change permissions, and grant access to any tool in the store, and once assigned, nobody else can remove, suspend, or delete that role.

Type their email into the New store owner field carefully; it's the address the transfer confirmation goes to. One constraint applies to either route: Shopify won't let a transfer start while the store carries an active Shopify Capital advance, Shopify Credit balance, or certain Shopify Balance obligations. Those need resolving first.

After submitting the new owner's email, Shopify emails them a confirmation they have to accept from their own login before the role actually changes hands. A transfer isn't final just because you clicked the button. Check the Access page for that user, which shows the current Store owner name and email next to the Change ownership button, to confirm the swap completed instead of assuming it went through silently.

Ownership moving doesn't move anything else automatically. The new owner needs to add their own payment method under Settings > Billing, and if payouts were tied to your bank account, update those details too.

Business contact information — store email, phone, address — stays as it was until someone edits it in General settings. Once the new owner's role is confirmed and billing is sorted, decide whether you still need your own staff account. If you're fully exiting, ask the new owner to remove your access once nothing is left to hand off, like unresolved orders or pending payouts.