The retail industry is undergoing a rapid transformation, driven by artificial intelligence, changing consumer habits, and the need for brands to offer increasingly connected and personalized experiences. In this context, we spoke with María Gallart, Head of Commercial at Shopify for Spain and Portugal, to learn her perspective on the main challenges businesses face today, the real impact of AI on the sector, and how Shopify is supporting brands in this new era of commerce.

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1. In your role as head of Shopify’s sales division in Spain and Portugal, what changes are you seeing in the priorities of brands and retailers in both markets?

We’re seeing a very clear shift: brands have moved beyond simply thinking about “having a store” to focusing on how to build a comprehensive commerce infrastructure. Our clients in Spain and Portugal are demanding not only an online channel but also solutions for international expansion, physical retail, B2B, payments, operational efficiency, and, increasingly, artificial intelligence. The market is evolving from pure e-commerce toward what we call unified commerce.

Spain, in particular, is one of the most dynamic and promising markets we have in Europe. During Black Friday and Cyber Monday in 2025, 35% of Spanish merchants’ sales were cross-border—the highest figure in the entire European Union. And we’re not just talking about big brands: international sales by rural Shopify merchants have grown by 1,844% over the past five years, demonstrating that Spain’s entrepreneurial ecosystem is decentralizing and competing beyond our borders at a very urban pace.

We’re also seeing a new generation of Spanish brands—Nude Project, Scuffers, Blue Banana, and Laagam, to name a few—that have been global from day one. In fact, 100% of the brands on the latest Spanish Hype List published by Modaes operate on Shopify. That international ambition, combined with the need to be present on any channel where consumers choose to shop, is the top priority we’re supporting today.

2. What are the main technological and business challenges that the companies you work with are currently bringing to your attention?

The number one challenge remains complexity. Many companies have built their operations around a collection of disconnected tools (one system for e-commerce, another for point-of-sale, another for payments, and another for B2B), which creates friction, integration costs, and a fragmented view of the business. That’s why one of Shopify’s greatest strengths lies in simplifying that complexity: a single admin panel, a single product catalog, and a single customer relationship, regardless of the channel.

The second major challenge is preparing for AI-driven commerce. Brands are no longer just competing to rank highly in traditional search engines; the question now is whether they will be visible, shoppable, and trustworthy within the conversations their customers are already having with AI assistants. This requires rethinking how catalogs and product data are structured.

And third, payments and international expansion remain a critical issue: how to accept local payment methods in each market, how to ensure transparency regarding tariffs and taxation, and how to do so without increasing the operational burden. Our latest results for the second quarter of 2026 clearly reflect this reality: Shopify grew by 32%, marking 12 consecutive quarters of growth above 20%. Europe, meanwhile, grew by 34%, well above the historical average, precisely because more and more brands are addressing this complexity by relying on a single infrastructure rather than building it on their own.

3. Artificial intelligence is transforming the entire retail value chain. Where does Shopify see the applications that are having the greatest real impact on brands?

We’re seeing this, above all, in three areas of the value chain. The first is product discovery: more and more searches, recommendations, and purchasing decisions are starting with conversational AI tools rather than a traditional search engine. In our last quarter, traffic to Shopify stores from AI channels tripled year-over-year, and orders generated from these channels grew at the same rate.

The second is conversion. Consumers who come from an AI search convert significantly more than those who come from traditional organic search (more than 80% more, according to our latest data) and have a higher average order value as well. This isn’t an experiment: it’s already a real and growing source of sales for our merchants.

And the third is operational efficiency behind the scenes: with Sidekick, our AI assistant, merchants can answer questions about sales, inventory, or performance in seconds—questions that previously required digging through reports or asking another team member for help. In the last quarter alone, the number of merchants using Sidekick daily has increased 3.6-fold, and we’ve logged nearly 34 million conversations. That’s where we see the real impact: not in AI as a promise for the future, but in discovery, conversion, and operations that are already working today.

4. How is Shopify incorporating artificial intelligence to help businesses sell more and operate more efficiently?

For twenty years, we’ve been building the infrastructure that powers commerce (payments, identity, fraud prevention, taxes, inventory, logistics), and that puts us in a unique position to bring that same infrastructure to AI-powered commerce—what we call “agentic commerce.”

With Agentic Storefronts, merchants can manage and sell their products directly within platforms such as ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, Google AI Mode, Gemini, or the Shop app, and starting this year, they can also manage those conversational channels and view their results from a single location within the Shopify Admin. All of this is powered by the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), an open standard we developed in partnership with Google that is already supported by some of the industry’s biggest players, and by our own catalog, which now includes over one billion products structured so that AI agents can understand and recommend them accurately.

To operate more efficiently, we’ve expanded Sidekick, which is now integrated into the admin panel to provide recommendations, automated analytics, and integration with third-party apps. And to help drive more sales, we’ve launched Campaign Autopilot, which automates and optimizes marketing campaigns across multiple channels (Meta, email, the Shop app, and coming soon, Snapchat), automatically adjusting them based on budget and performance; and we’ve expanded Shop Campaigns to Spain—a tool that lets merchants pay only when they make a sale, with no upfront cost and no need to manage separate advertising platforms.

5. You’ve worked at both large corporations and hyper-growth companies. Based on that experience, what do organizations that successfully scale their digital businesses have in common?

When I worked at large corporations, I learned the value of structure, rigorous processes, and making decisions based on solid data; and when I made the leap to hyper-growth companies, I learned what seemed to be the opposite, but was just as necessary: speed, the ability to adapt on the fly, and making decisions with incomplete information. The interesting thing is that the organizations that scale best are the ones that manage to get the best of both worlds, and that’s exactly what I see today in the businesses we work with at Shopify.

The first thing they have in common is that they build their growth on a single technological foundation, rather than adding tools and workarounds as new needs arise—something that, in the large corporations where I worked before, used to take years of migrations and integrations. That single foundation allows them to test new channels (B2B, retail, etc.) or new markets quickly and at minimal cost, enabling them to make rapid, data-driven strategic decisions without making major investments. One example is Scuffers, which has grown 225% year-over-year. In their case, they use the “Markets” feature to test new countries online in record time, and only when they see traction do they invest in localization and retail.

The second common trait is decision-making speed: companies that scale effectively are those that manage to turn data into quick decisions—whether regarding products, marketing, or expansion—rather than waiting weeks to consolidate information scattered across different systems. A good example is PadelPROShop, which has grown its revenue from 1 to 28 million euros in six years by relying on this combination of accessible data and automation.

And the third, closely tied to the current moment, is the willingness to adopt artificial intelligence quickly and naturally—not as an isolated innovation project, but as an integral part of day-to-day business operations. It’s no coincidence that 78% of Spanish entrepreneurs say that AI makes it easier to start a business today—the highest percentage among the markets we’ve analyzed—nor that 87% of Spanish founders would start a business again knowing what they know today. That combination of ambition, unified technology, and early adoption of AI is, in my experience, the common thread among those who successfully scale their businesses.

6. Looking ahead to the coming years, what do you think will be the major changes that will shape the future of commerce?

The first is the consolidation of agent-based commerce as just another sales channel, not as an experimental novelty. AI agents will continue to play an increasingly important role in helping consumers discover products, compare options, and complete purchases, and brands that aren’t prepared to be visible and transactable within those conversations will miss out on real sales opportunities. The data already confirms this: in our last quarter, AI traffic to Shopify stores tripled and continues to accelerate.

The second is that commerce will become increasingly distributed, conversational, and data-driven: the web is no longer the sole point of contact, and the intent to purchase can arise on social media, in a physical store, or during a conversation with an AI assistant. This forces brands to think in terms of infrastructure, not individual channels, which is why they need a unified commerce strategy that ensures a single view of the customer at every touchpoint, delivering a consistent and positive experience to consumers at all times.

And the third is that trust at the point of transaction will become a core competitive asset. As AI agents become the new gateway to commerce, only those who control the entire stack—payments, identity, fraud prevention, and logistics—can guarantee that end-to-end trust. That’s why we continue to invest in Shopify Payments and Shop Pay, which once again posted strong growth in our last quarter, and why we believe the future of commerce will be built on open standards—such as the Universal Commerce Protocol—that allow any brand to participate in this ecosystem without having to rebuild its business from scratch.