Failed customer payments

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Failed customer payments

Last updated September 23, 2026 15:51

What happens when customer payments through Squarespace Payments fail.

You can review your customers' failed payments through Squarespace Payments on your Squarespace site. If a customer's payment fails, it’s usually related to their card, and they should contact their bank to resolve the issue.

Note: To manage failed payments made through PayPal, log into your PayPal Business account or contact PayPal for help. To manage failed payments through 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 Payments panel. This panel displays payments that fail or are declined after checkout. If a customer’s payment fails, their order doesn’t register in your Orders panel and it won’t affect your inventory.

To review failed payments:

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

Failed recurring payments

When customers make recurring payments for subscription products, paywalled content, and donations, they save their information and are charged automatically at renewal. A renewal payment will fail if:

After the first failure, we try to charge them two more times. For more details, visit Troubleshooting failed subscription payments.

Failed ongoing pricing plan payments

If you sell access to blog posts, courses, videos, service products or member sites with ongoing pricing plan payments (either recurring subscription or installments), your members are charged automatically for each pricing plan renewal or installment.

After the first failure, we try to charge them two more times. 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

Squarespace Payments will initially mark failed Afterpay, Clearpay, and Klarnatransactions 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. They shouldn't use in-app browsers, like Instagram or TikTok's browser, as those browsers don't support Afterpay, Clearpay, or Klarna.
  • Try a different browser.
  • Try 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, review the guide for your device:

Strong Customer Authentication for European customers

Customers with credit cards issued in the European Economic Area (EEA) may have 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.

To learn more, visit Strong Customer Authentication.

Get help with failed payments through Squarespace Payments

For more help with Squarespace Payments transactions, contact us. Your customer should also contact their bank or card provider.

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Failed customer payments