Tips on what to do if a customer's payment fails.

Customers' payments through the Commerce platform can fail for different reasons, ranging from incorrectly entered information to fraud prevention. If a customer's payment fails, their order doesn't register in Squarespace and it won't affect your inventory.

Note: This guide covers Squarespace Payments transactions. To manage failed payments with PayPal or Stripe:

• PayPal: Log into your PayPal Business account or contact PayPal for help.
• Stripe: Log into your Stripe dashboard or contact Stripe for help.

Review failed payments

You can view a list of failed Squarespace Payments in your Squarespace site.

To review failed payments:

1. Open the Finance panel.
2. Click Payments.
3. Click Failed.

This panel displays payments that fail or are declined after checkout. If a customer's payment fails, they should contact their bank to resolve the issue.

Failed recurring payments

When customers make recurring payments for subscriptions products, paywalled content, and donations, they save their payment information and are charged automatically at each renewal. A renewal payment will fail if a customer’s payment details expire, or if you change the payment processor account connected to your site.

Subscription payments will also fail if you downgrade to a website plan that doesn't support selling subscription products.

If this happens, you and the customer will receive an email notification about the failed payment. The customer’s email will include a link to update their billing information.

The charge will be attempted two more times over a period of ten days. If it fails three times, the subscription is canceled.

Failed ongoing pricing plan payments

If you sell access to your blog posts, course, videos, or member site with ongoing pricing plan payments (either recurring subscription or installments), your members are charged automatically for each pricing plan renewal or installment. We treat failed ongoing pricing plan payments the same as failed subscription payments. If the payment fails three times in ten days, the membership is canceled and the member loses access to your gated content.

Failed Afterpay, Clearpay or Klarna payments

When your customers successfully checkout using Klarna, Afterpay or Clearpay, an Order Confirmation page appears and they receive an order confirmation email. If these don't appear for your customer, check your Stripe dashboard for payments marked Uncaptured.

An Uncaptured payment is a transaction record where no funds were actually taken from your customer's bank account. Your customer's bank may place a temporary hold on the uncaptured funds. You can cancel the uncaptured payment in your Stripe dashboard, or Stripe will automatically cancel the payment in 14 days.

Squarespace Payments will initially mark uncaptured Afterpay, Clearpay and Klarna transactions as pending. However, if the issue isn't resolved in one business day, the transaction will be automatically canceled.

If a customer reports this issue, ensure they:

• Update their browser and their device's operating system.
• Try a different browser. Confirm they're not using in-app browsers, like Instagram or TikTok's browser. These browsers don't support Afterpay, Clearpay or Klarna's functionality.
• Use a different device to make the payment.

If their payment fails again, ask your customer which browser they're using and their device details, like operating system and device version, then contact us.

Failed Tap to Pay transactions

If you're having trouble accepting payments with Tap to Pay on your iPhone or Android device, review these guides:

• Troubleshooting Tap to Pay on iPhone
• Troubleshooting Tap to Pay on Android

Strong Customer Authentication for European customers

Customers with credit cards issued in the EEA may see an extra authentication step during checkout. While the exact authentication process depends on the customer’s bank, it typically prompts a browser pop-up or push notification from a banking app.

If a customer doesn’t authorize the charge, the transaction will fail. In these cases, ask the customer to try again, ensuring they verify the charge with their bank. 

Customers may also need to re-authorize the charge for recurring payments, like subscription products and pricing plans.

You can learn more about Strong Customer Authentication here.

Get help with failed payments

For more help with Squarespace Payments transactions, contact us. For more help with Stripe payment transactions, contact Stripe. Your customer may also want to contact their bank or card provider for further assistance.