Accepting bank transfers and cash with Squarespace

Some customers don't want to pay for their orders using a bank card or PayPal. There’s a problem though. Squarespace does not accept alternative payment methods like cash on delivery (COD), money orders, bank transfers (including ACH) or, in Canada, email money transfers.

If Squarespace supported these manual payment methods, customers could still place their orders online. It’s a particular problem for businesses selling high value goods, who cannot afford to pay transaction fees of around 3%.

Until Squarespace introduce this feature, there’s little you can do. A developer cannot modify the Squarespace checkout because the Squarespace checkout is “locked down” to protect payment security, so this prevents us from developing a third party solution to use the Squarespace checkout. It also prevents you using any third-party payment APIs.

What are the options?

If you have already committed to Squarespace by building your website then you may be wondering what you can do. There’s no perfect answer but you may want to consider one of the following options.

1. Buy buttons

Buy Buttons aren’t perfect, but they can be a good compromise if you need checkout features that Squarespace doesn’t offer. Buy Buttons are available from both Shopify and Ecwid (affiliate links) and they’ll allow you to process orders and payments through their platforms, directly from your Squarespace website. I’ve written more detailed guides to using these buy buttons here:

How to use Shopify Buy Buttons with Squarespace

How to add Klarna, zip pay or IDEAL to Squarespace

2. Wishlist plugin

I built a Squarespace plugin called Wishlist. It wasn’t strictly designed for this purpose, but if you only want to accept ‘cash on delivery’ orders or bank payment by invoice (and don’t want to accept online payments) it may be a good compromise.

When added to a Squarespace website, the Wishlist plugin removes the checkout and online-payment features and replaces them with a form that customers can complete and submit. Instead of orders arriving within the Squarespace commerce platform, you will receive an email containing the contents of the form as well as the list of products that were in the cart. You can then manually process their “order” on another platform, taking offline payments however you choose.

3. Move from Squarespace to Shopify

This is hardly the ideal answer if you’ve just finished building on Squarespace but, if your ecommerce needs exceed the features available on Squarespace Commerce, it may be better to move your store to Shopify (affiliate link).

In summary, Shopify is a more advanced ecommerce platform that can do almost anything. Businesses as diverse as Decathlon, Heinz, Lindt, Oatly and Staples all use Shopify! This flexibility comes at a price because the learning curve is steeper than Squarespace, but it may be worth it. The best way to find out is to get a free-trial and take it for a spin.

In addition to manual payment methods, Shopify supports many different payment providers in different countries and their fees are often lower than Squarespace’s partners. For example, in the UK and US Shopify payments take a lower percentage than Stripe.

I hope this helps.

Paul
founder of sf.digital