is this email from Shopify scam or real ?

It’s legit, 👍

I got the same thing, and the link to opt out was correct and went to my Shopify payments area. It’s basically revenue for Shopify: it encourages customers to spend more money at their stores, so they get paid, and the cost comes out of our pockets as the sellers who pay the transaction fees.

Opinion wise, a lot of people like it and use it. Personally, I do not like it because it’s twice the cost (5.9% instead of 26% transaction fee), but more than that, I don’t like the idea that people will get excited and purchase my stickers and be really happy when the envelope comes, but then they keep seeing my name pop up over and over in future monthly payments. I feel like that leads to a large first purchase, but a sort of subconscious negative effect later down the road when somebody is still paying for your items after the excitement of their initial order has worn off. ((A credit card is different, they’re just paying one generic bill for everything they’ve bought, but for these individual payment services where the customers see your specific store name over and over and over, I suspect that it’s not positive in the long run)

I also personally don’t love the idea of encouraging my customers to use credit for my products: if you can afford it, spend away, but if you can’t afford it that you need a payment plan, I’d rather you just save your money to go spend on food or something, rather than going into debt at my store. I’m certain I’m the odd one out, 99% of people would just be worried about their own profit, but I just don’t like supporting this mentality in general.