Gross Merchandise Value, or GMV, is the total dollar value of goods or services sold through a platform or marketplace, before the platform's own take rate, fees, refunds, or costs are subtracted.
GMV matters most for marketplace and platform businesses, where the company itself doesn't own or directly sell the underlying goods. It takes a cut of transactions happening on the platform, so GMV represents total transaction volume rather than the company's own revenue.
A large GMV number can overstate how big a business actually is if the take rate is thin. A company processing $100 million in GMV at a 5% take rate generates $5 million in actual revenue, a very different number. Worth looking at revenue and margin alongside GMV, not GMV alone, when sizing up a marketplace business.
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