BigCommerce has announced yet another much-talked-about partnership with PayPal - and this time, it's around a new “BigCommerce Payments” service aimed at simplifying merchant transactions.

On paper, that sounds promising. However, in practice, it feels like déjà vu.

Integrating payments directly into the BigCommerce interface is hardly groundbreaking territory when it comes to the world of ecommerce. Shopify Payments has been an integral part of the eponymous company for years, and now, we're seeing even smaller platforms bundling financial tools to increase what SaaS companies call "attach rate" (the share of total merchant sales that turn into revenue for the platform). 

For BigCommerce, the logic is obvious: diversify beyond subscription fees, and capture a slice of payment processing as you go. But the execution feels less like innovation and more like playing catch-up.

Furthermore, it's telling that this partnership seems targeted at small merchants, and not at enterprise users. The PayPal executive quoted in the announcement primarily deals with “Small Business & Financial Services,” which says plenty about where this move sits in BigCommerce’s hierarchy of priorities. 

Large brands running complex operations don’t need PayPal integrations baked into their dashboards, because they - in almost every instance - already have payment infrastructures and financial reporting systems of their own. For smaller sellers, though, logging into BigCommerce might now be easier than navigating PayPal’s famously clunky backend. 

And while that may be a win, it’s not exactly game-changing.

BigCommerce has always looked to Shopify as a shining example of monetisation, and it's not difficult to see why. Shopify’s merchant services revenue - things like payments, transaction fees, and financial tools - makes up almost a staggering three-quarters of its total income. 

BigCommerce, by contrast, mostly relies on its SaaS model. So, while integrating PayPal seems like a natural move to help it tap into an extra revenue stream, it’s still years behind the market leader - which leads us to the burning question: if this is the company’s “big announcement” of the year, it reveals a wider problem: BigCommerce is reacting, not leading.

There’s an air of repetition to BigCommerce’s news cycle - each new partnership is framed as a milestone, yet few translate into visible momentum, and it's clear that the market agrees. The company’s share price is on a continuous decline, and the quiet shift toward simply calling itself “Commerce” feels more like a rebrand born of frustration than of ambition.

Shopify expands its ecosystem, while BigCommerce signs another deal with PayPal. The contrast is telling, to say the least.

Partnerships can be a good thing, but what they’re not is a replacement for a meaningful strategy. For BigCommerce, this feels like a necessary move to squeeze a bit more value from its base above anything else. If the company wants to position itself as serious competition to Shopify, it’s going to require more than carefully curated press releases. It will require genuine innovation. 

Skywire’s take on the partnership? Convenient for small merchants, irrelevant for enterprise, and a giant, glaring reminder to all and sundry that BigCommerce is still trailing Shopify in both monetisation and strategy.