Failed customer payments

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

Last updated January 3, 2025

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 and Stripe transactions. Log into your PayPal Business account to view PayPal payment details. For help with PayPal, contact PayPal.

Review failed payments

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

Squarespace 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.

Stripe

  1. Open the Payments panel.
  2. Click Stripe, then click 
  3. Click the Failures tab. Click any transaction to view more details in Stripe.

This panel only displays payments that fail or are declined after being sent to Stripe. If a payment fails before a payment event is created in Stripe, it won't appear in the Failures tab. One reason this might happen is if the charge failed because of a network connection issue.

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On Stripe's payment activity page, check Status for possible reasons the transaction was declined. You can also scroll down to Card to see which fields triggered the decline. For more help, visit Stripe's documentation.

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Failed recurring payments

When customers make recurring payments for subscriptions products, digital products, 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.

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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 Digital Products 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 or Clearpay payments

When your customers successfully check out using 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.

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Uncaptured_Afterpay_payment.png

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.

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 or Clearpay'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.

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. 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.

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Failed customer payments