Over the past five years, TikTok Shop has grown from a scale of less than 1 billion US dollars to a half-year GMV of 50.3 billion US dollars, rewriting the global e-commerce landscape at a speed rarely seen in the history of retail. However, at the same time, undercurrents are also surging beneath the high-growth data.
Five years ago, the annual Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) of TikTok Shop was less than 1 billion U.S. dollars. By 2026, this e-commerce platform that started with short videos is approaching the 100-billion-U.S.-dollar mark at a staggering speed.
On August 6, Singapore-based research firm Momentum Works, in collaboration with data platform Tabcut, released a report showing that in the first half of 2026, TikTok Shop’s global GMV reached 50.3 billion U.S. dollars, a year-on-year increase of 92%, nearly doubling. Following the current growth trend, the full-year GMV is expected to exceed 100 billion U.S. dollars for the first time, hitting 123.5 billion U.S. dollars. In just over four years, TikTok Shop’s scale has expanded more than tenfold — its full-year GMV was 4.4 billion U.S. dollars in 2022, 16.3 billion in 2023, 33.2 billion in 2024, and 64.3 billion in 2025.
U.S. Takes the Top Spot: From Follower to Leader
The most striking change amid this growth is the strong rise of the U.S. market to the top position.
In the first half of 2026, the GMV of TikTok Shop’s U.S. market reached 11.8 billion U.S. dollars, a year-on-year increase of 103%, surpassing Indonesia to become the platform’s largest single market worldwide for the first time. From March to June, the monthly GMV of the U.S. market stood above 2 billion U.S. dollars for four consecutive months. For reference, the full-year GMV of the U.S. market in 2025 was 15.1 billion U.S. dollars, and the figure in the first half of 2026 is nearly 80% of last year’s total.
The platform ecosystem has also expanded simultaneously. The number of global stores has grown from 475,000 a year ago to 1.35 million, and the scale of creators has expanded from 15.3 million to 20 million. In the U.S. market, 5,700 stores have seen their GMV exceed 1 million U.S. dollars, of which 506 stores have a GMV of over 10 million U.S. dollars, and two more stores have a GMV of over 100 million U.S. dollars in half a year.
Surpassing Target: The Quiet Rise in Market Share
TikTok Shop is not only galloping along its own growth curve, but also breaking into the territory of traditional retail giants.
According to U.S. credit and debit card transaction data compiled by consumer intelligence firm Consumer Edge, in July, U.S. consumers spent more on TikTok Shop than on the online channels of major retailers including Target, Costco and The Home Depot. TikTok Shop accounted for approximately 2% of total U.S. online retail spending that month, up from about 1.2% a year earlier. Michael Gunther, Senior Vice President of Research and Market Intelligence at Consumer Edge, described this market share growth as “huge”.
Although there is still a huge gap compared with Amazon’s monthly market share of about 35%, and it is still less than Walmart’s share of about 7%, the speed at which TikTok Shop has caught up with smaller competitors from scratch in three years is almost unprecedented in the history of retail. “Considering that TikTok Shop had zero market presence just a few years ago, these moves are really, really significant,” Gunther said. “I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anything like this before.”
Changes in Transaction Structure: Mall Overtakes Short Videos
Behind the rapid growth lies a profound shift in users’ shopping behavior.
In the U.S. market, the TikTok Shop Mall contributes 51.4% of attributed GMV, a sharp increase from 36% a year ago; the share of short videos dropped from 50% to 40.4%, and the share of live streaming dropped from 14% to 8.2%. More than half of the transactions take place in the mall, rather than in short videos and live streaming rooms. The path of “discovering products through scrolling videos, then searching and purchasing in the mall” is becoming the mainstream conversion path in the U.S. region.
Short videos remain the primary entry point for product discovery — 62% of users say they use TikTok to find new products — but transactions are increasingly completed on the mall page. This sets new requirements for sellers’ operation methods: previously, creating one hit video could drive sales of a product link, but now sellers also need to put in solid work on product cards, search rankings, store ratings and other “non-popular” metrics.
Live streaming has not disappeared, but is concentrating on top creators. Among the top 10 creators by GMV in the U.S. region in the first half of the year, 8 rely mainly on live streaming to drive sales, and men’s personal care brand BASED can generate millions of U.S. dollars in revenue in a single live stream. However, for ordinary sellers, copying the live streaming tactics of top players will most likely only make them part of the non-performing denominator.
Tightening Compliance: From Unrestrained Growth to Refined Operation
The other side of rapid expansion is the rapid tightening of platform rules.
In 2026, TikTok Shop has undergone a round of intensive policy upgrades. On February 25, the platform ended the independent seller self-fulfillment model, forcing local U.S. sellers to use the platform’s logistics services or the approved supplier list. On June 25, the full text of the Account Health Rating (scored from 0 to 1000) rule was released, which officially replaced the previous violation point system in July. Sellers with a score below 150 will not be able to list products or participate in marketing activities.
On August 6, TikTok Shop U.S. Academy released the operation guide for “Changing Seller Entity”, which specifies the process and consequences for sellers when changing their business entities. According to the guide, during the period when the seller changes the business entity, the store must enter vacation mode and suspend sales, and the account funds will be frozen until 24 hours after the approval is passed. All brand qualifications and category qualifications will become invalid and need to be re-applied; the Official Shop logo will be removed and re-submission of application is required.
This mechanism fills the previous gap where sellers had to choose between “continuing to operate with a mismatched entity” and “opening a new store from scratch” due to legal structure adjustments. For sellers operating in multiple restricted categories (a total of 16 category-level and 13 product-level categories require pre-qualification approval), one entity change means multiple rounds of queuing, and products will remain delisted during this period.
The Retreat of Gen Z and the Rise of Micro-Influencers
Beneath the rapidly growing data, undercurrents are also surging.
A Harris Poll in May 2026 showed that 63% of Gen Z respondents said they had stopped shopping on TikTok Shop. eMarketer, which released the data, pointed out that this may be due to declining user satisfaction with the platform itself. At the same time, users aged 25 to 44 have become the most active shopping group on the platform.
The retreat of young users may be related to social trends such as the “anti-consumerism movement”, and may also reflect economic pressure — however, as Mashable joked, “Perhaps scrolling TikTok to shop for small gifts because you can’t afford a house is itself a sign of a recession.”
In addition, disputes over product quality on the platform continue to ferment. According to a Mashable report in November 2025, TikTok Shop is reportedly flooded with 70 million products of unknown origin, partly due to the proliferation of AI-generated content. This year, the gray market of GLP-1 drugs on the platform is also expanding.
But on the other side of the coin, TikTok’s value as a product discovery engine is still increasing. Analysis by social marketing firm Sociallyin shows that more than 60% of TikTok users will make an immediate purchase after discovering a product on the platform, and 71% of Gen Z users have bought products they first discovered through TikTok. About half of TikTok users will use the platform to conduct research before making a purchase.
Micro-influencers are becoming a key variable in this ecosystem. They build high-sticky communities around niche interests, focus their content on real product usage scenarios, and the interaction rate of their marketing activities can be up to 5% higher than that of top creators. Keith Kakadia, CEO of Sociallyin, pointed out: “Micro-influencers are becoming more and more influential on TikTok because their content feels closer to the moment of purchase. Before people spend money, they all want to see how the product is applied in real life.”
For brands, this means a reshaping of marketing logic — authenticity, relevance and trust may be more important than the traditional scale of advertising. The next wave of TikTok sales may not come from the most vocal influencers, but from creators who make their audience think “I can imagine myself using this product”.
After the 100-Billion-Dollar Mark: The Next Stop of Social E-Commerce
The rise of TikTok Shop is essentially a reconstruction of the core e-commerce chain of “discovery – decision – purchase”. Traditional e-commerce follows the model of “search then purchase”, while TikTok Shop is building a new paradigm of “discover then purchase instantly”.
In the second half of 2026, TikTok Shop launched a membership program similar to Amazon Prime, offering benefits such as free shipping, and providing sellers with management services for video production and promotion. During the “Black Friday” and “Cyber Monday” promotion weeks last year, the platform’s sales in the U.S. exceeded 500 million U.S. dollars. In recent months, it has partnered with major brands such as Samsung, Disney and Ralph Lauren.
From 4.4 billion U.S. dollars to 123.5 billion U.S. dollars, TikTok Shop took less than five years. This speed is a miracle in any retail track. However, after crossing the 100-billion-dollar mark, the challenges are equally clear: how to maintain the bottom line of product quality while expanding scale? How to strike a balance between tightening compliance and seller growth? How to retain the influx of middle-aged shoppers while winning back the lost young users?
Momentum Works predicts that the full-year GMV in 2026 will reach 123.5 billion U.S. dollars. By then, TikTok Shop will officially join the $100 billion e-commerce club. But what is more noteworthy than the numbers is the continuous impact of the social e-commerce model it represents on traditional retail infrastructure — this revolution has only just begun.
This article is from the WeChat official account “Tech Business” (ID: InnoBusiness), the author is Tech Business, and it is published with authorization from 36Kr.
