My international tracking is stuck on "in transit" after Markets Pro hands it to a local carrier — what do I tell customers?
When Shopify Markets Pro hands an international parcel to a local carrier for final-mile delivery, the tracking number often changes, and Shopify's order status page can keep showing the old, stale "in transit" scan.
What's going on
A merchant using Shopify Markets Pro (or Managed Markets) for cross-border orders notices that tracking for international shipments stalls partway through: the order status page keeps showing "in transit" with a scan from days ago, even though the parcel is actually moving. Customers assume it's lost and start emailing.
The root cause is how Markets Pro fulfills cross-border orders. Markets Pro runs on Global-e, which acts as merchant of record for international sales: it handles duties, customs clearance, and the international leg of the shipment, then routes the parcel through a consolidation or repackaging hub in or near the destination country. From there, the parcel is relabeled and handed to a local final-mile carrier for the last leg of delivery, and that handoff usually comes with a new tracking number unrelated to the one the customer was originally given.
Shopify's order status page and the Shop app display tracking based on whichever tracking number and carrier are attached to the fulfillment. If only the original tracking number is on file, Shopify keeps checking that carrier's system for updates, but that carrier's job ended at the consolidation hub, so its last scan is the last thing anyone sees. Meanwhile the parcel is moving under a different tracking number with the local carrier, invisible to both the merchant's dashboard and the customer's tracking link.
This isn't a bug or an outage. It's a structural consequence of how cross-border merchant-of-record shipping works, and it recurs on essentially every international order that goes through a repackaging or relabeling step, not just occasionally.
Why it happens
Markets Pro's cross-border model splits fulfillment into at least two legs: an international leg (customs clearance and cross-border transit under Global-e/Markets Pro) and a final-mile leg (a local courier delivering within the destination country). Each leg can have its own tracking number and carrier because they're operationally separate shipments stitched together by Global-e's backend; Shopify only knows what tracking data has actually been entered on the fulfillment.
When only the first tracking number gets recorded, Shopify has no way to know a handoff happened, so the order status page keeps showing the last event from the original carrier indefinitely, even after the parcel has cleared the repackaging hub and is genuinely moving via the local courier.
5 ways to fix it
Add the local carrier's tracking number to the fulfillment yourself
Once you can see the parcel has been handed to a final-mile carrier (Global-e's shipment emails or the Markets Pro tracking portal will show the new number), open the order in Shopify Admin, go to the fulfillment, and use the tracking edit option to add that second tracking number under the correct local carrier. Shopify supports multiple tracking numbers per fulfillment, and once the local carrier is recognized, the order status page and Shop app start pulling live scans from that carrier instead of repeating the stale first-leg status. This is the most direct fix and doesn't require installing anything.
Point customers to the Global-e tracking page, not just Shopify's
Because Global-e, the merchant-of-record partner behind Markets Pro, manages customs clearance and the international leg separately from final domestic delivery, its own tracking emails and hosted tracking page are often more current than Shopify's order status page during the handoff window. Add a line to your shipping policy or shipping-confirmation email explaining that international orders may show two tracking links: one for the international leg, and a second that becomes active once the parcel is handed to a local courier.
Set expectations up front on the product or cart page
Since the repackaging and carrier handoff is a routine part of how Markets Pro (and most cross-border consolidators) fulfill orders, add a short note near checkout or in your shipping FAQ that international tracking may pause for a few days while the parcel clears customs and moves to a local courier under a new tracking number. That alone heads off a large share of "where is my order" tickets without changing any settings.
If you run a custom fulfillment integration, push an explicit status update at handoff
If your store uses an app or custom integration that manages fulfillment tracking programmatically, check whether it can post an update at the moment of handoff so the order timeline reflects the carrier change instead of silently repeating the last international-leg event. This depends on your specific app or integration's capabilities, not on anything configurable in stock Shopify Admin, so confirm with your developer or app provider what's actually supported.
If this happens on every international order, treat it as a process fix, not a one-off
If Markets Pro handoffs are a recurring gap for your store, standardize the fix: template your shipping-confirmation and order-status messaging to always mention both tracking legs, and make adding the second tracking number a routine step whenever you process international fulfillments, rather than solving it order by order after customers complain.
Bottom line
There's no single Shopify setting that fixes this — it's a structural side effect of Markets Pro using a merchant-of-record partner (Global-e) that repackages parcels and swaps carriers partway through international delivery. The fastest fix is manual: add the second tracking number to the fulfillment. The most durable fix is communication: tell customers up front that international tracking has two legs. If international volume is high enough that this eats real support time, it may be worth looking at apps that consolidate multi-carrier tracking into one customer-facing timeline — but for most stores this is a process and messaging fix, not something that requires buying an app.
Browse the rest of the problem library, run a free storefront scan to catch issues like this automatically, or email us and we'll work out a custom solution for it.