On 2 April 2026, Shopify made the core B2B (business-to-business) features available on the Basic, Grow and Advanced plans at no extra cost. Functionality that until now required Shopify Plus (from ¥368,000 a month as of April 2026) is now available on plans costing a few thousand yen a month.
Working from the official changelog, here is what the update actually contains, a refresher on B2B ecommerce, and what merchants in Japan should be thinking about.
What the announcement covers: what the standard plans now get
Pulling together what Shopify's changelog says, these are the B2B features now available on the standard plans.
- Companies (business customer management): create company profiles for wholesale buyers and manage customers at the company level
- Company locations and location-level permissions
- Up to three active catalogues: up to three price lists for different types of buyer
- Quantity rules and volume pricing: minimum lot sizes and volume discounts
- Net payment terms: deferred payment and payment on account
- Self-serve ordering: B2B customers log in and place orders, reorder and request returns themselves
- Saved credit card details
- Automation through Shopify Flow
Some features remain Plus-only.
- Unlimited catalogues (standard plans are capped at three)
- Assigning catalogues directly to companies or company locations
- Deposits and partial payments
- Payment requests per fulfilment
- Showing different content to B2B and D2C customers in the theme editor
In short, you can now run basic B2B operations on a standard plan. If you need finely differentiated pricing and product ranges per buyer, or complex payment terms, you still need Plus.
A refresher on B2B ecommerce
This update will have plenty of merchants wondering whether wholesale is now within reach. So let us go over the fundamentals.
How B2B differs from D2C
D2C (direct to consumer), the model most ecommerce merchants know, means selling straight to consumers. B2B means selling to other businesses, and the structure of the transaction is quite different.
| Aspect | D2C | B2B |
|---|---|---|
| Who you sell to | Consumers | Retailers, distributors, businesses |
| Order size | One to a few units | Lots and cases |
| Pricing | List price, the same for everyone | Wholesale price per buyer |
| Payment | Card, paid immediately | On account, by invoice |
| Purchase frequency | Irregular | Regular and ongoing |
| Decision-making | An individual | An organisation (buyer, then approver) |
The global B2B commerce market is estimated at roughly $36 trillion — literally orders of magnitude larger than D2C.
What made wholesale on Shopify hard until now
Doing B2B on Shopify effectively required Plus. Without the B2B features, you ran into problems like these.
Wholesale prices managed in Excel or a spreadsheet and updated by hand. Orders arriving by email, phone and fax, then keyed into the system manually. Retail prices accidentally visible to wholesale buyers. Separate systems for D2C and wholesale, leaving inventory and customer data scattered across both.
Plugins and third-party apps could paper over the gaps, but the result was usually patchwork. This update turns most of those problems into things Shopify handles as standard.
What it means for merchants in Japan
You can now simply try it
The most important change is that trying B2B no longer means upgrading to Plus first.
Plenty of merchants running a D2C Shopify store find that enquiries from retailers are picking up, or want to supply a shop they know. Until now that meant migrating to Plus for that purpose alone, or standing up a separate system. From now on you can enable company customer management, wholesale pricing, payment on account and self-serve ordering on the plan you are already on.
Getting the basic wholesale machinery without any extra monthly cost makes a staged approach much easier: try it with a handful of accounts, and expand if it works.
"Being able to do B2B" and "building a real B2B operation" are different things
What the standard plans give you is the foundation, no more.
Once you have a lot of accounts and need four or more catalogues, or deposits, partial payments or per-fulfilment invoicing, or a store design that clearly separates the B2B buying experience from D2C, the standard plans will not stretch that far.
Working out up front how complex your B2B operation really is makes the decision much easier.
Four things to check before you enable B2B
There are four points that are easy to miss before you turn the B2B features on. Skip them and you may find that everything is configured but nothing works.
1. Check that you are on the new Markets
To use B2B catalogues on Basic, Grow or Advanced, your store must be on the new version of Shopify Markets (the version introduced from 2025 onwards). On the old Markets, B2B catalogue pricing does not work.
Open Settings > Markets in the Shopify admin and confirm you have been switched to the new Markets before you start. Miss this and you will find you have enabled B2B but cannot configure a catalogue.
2. New customer accounts must be enabled
B2B customers cannot see B2B pricing or B2B-only products unless they log in. Customer accounts must be enabled, and the classic customer accounts — the ones whose login page matches your theme — are not supported. Migrating to new customer accounts is a prerequisite.
If your D2C store is still on classic customer accounts, this is the most likely bottleneck. We recommend planning that migration first.
3. One store for both, or a dedicated B2B store?
Shopify supports two operating models for B2B.
The first is a blended store: one admin and one online store running D2C and B2B together, sharing inventory and theme. The second is a dedicated store: a separate storefront just for B2B.
For simple trading with a handful of wholesale accounts, a blended store is enough; if you want to give B2B customers their own screens and product range, a dedicated store suits better. Switching later is a lot of work, so decide at the outset.
4. Discounts and shipping behave differently
In a blended store, automatic discounts and discount codes are disabled for B2B by default. To use them for B2B, you must ask Shopify support to enable them — and once enabled, discounts apply to both B2B and D2C, so restricting them to B2B alone means controlling who sees what through customer segments.
Shipping has its own constraints too: local delivery and pickup points are not compatible with B2B. Discounts and shipping are where unexpected behaviour is most likely, so check the specifications before you go live.
Who this suits
Cases where the standard plans are a good place to start
You already run a D2C Shopify store, you have a handful of wholesale accounts, and two or three pricing tiers cover it. Payment on account and straightforward reordering are all you need. If that describes you, the standard-plan B2B features will do the job.
Concretely: retailers and buyers are already contacting you and you want to systematise orders currently taken by email and phone. Or your pricing splits cleanly into categories like "independent retail", "volume retail" and "distributor".
Cases where you should plan around Plus
If each account needs its own price list and you will exceed three catalogues, if you have complex payment terms such as deposits or partial payments, or if you want a bespoke B2B store design, designing around Plus from the start will save you the rework of forcing it onto a standard plan.
Industries that suit it
B2B ecommerce works best for products that get reordered. Food and drink manufacturers supplying restaurants and retailers on a regular cycle; apparel brands supplying select shops each season; cosmetics manufacturers selling professional lines to salons. Industries with recurring business orders, such as parts and consumables, suit it well too.
After you start: keeping business customers trading with you
Enabling the B2B features is not the end of it. The next question is how you build an ongoing relationship with your business customers.
Compared with D2C consumers, B2B customers order more often and each order is worth more. In exchange there is administration D2C does not have: contacts change, purchase cycles fluctuate, and inventory has to be tracked by lot.
Because this update standardises order history and reordering through customer accounts, data about who bought what and when now accumulates far more readily. Whether you can put that data to work is what determines the return on your B2B operation.
Checking in with a business customer who has not ordered for a while. Reminders timed to their purchase cycle. Handling the handover when their contact changes. Designing those communications has a great deal in common with running CRM for D2C.
StoreCRM gives you segmentation based on purchase data, automated emails to dormant customers, staged communication through automated email sequences and automation via Shopify Flow. Bringing that CRM thinking to your business customers should improve both retention and average order value.
Summary
This update is not a story about B2B getting cheaper. It is that the entry point for B2B now extends to the standard plans, and the basics of wholesale can be assembled from Shopify's standard features.
That said, Plus retains a clear advantage in catalogue flexibility, payment terms and how far you can take the store design.
Start by taking stock of your own wholesale business: which accounts you sell to, at what prices, on what terms. Once that is clear, whether a standard plan is enough or you need Plus becomes an easy call.
