Squarespace was founded over 20 years ago to make it easy for anyone to build and host websites. Since then, the New York City–based company has expanded its offerings into a full suite of AI-driven products, including design and analytics capabilities, as well as domains, marketing, e-commerce, scheduling and financial tools – all built to help entrepreneurs build, run and grow successful online businesses.

For over a decade, Stripe has partnered with Squarespace to help it create and constantly improve the financial tools it offers sellers. The relationship began in 2012, when Squarespace partnered with Stripe to process subscription payments. A year later, Squarespace launched Squarespace Commerce, enabling merchants to accept online payment for products through Stripe. The partnership expanded quickly from there, with both companies helping shape one another's roadmaps to better serve online businesses.

In 2023, Squarespace launched a white-labelled payments platform, which has since become the foundation of a broader set of embedded finance tools. Together, these products help merchants run their businesses more efficiently while advancing Squarespace's goal of becoming a one-stop shop for online businesses.

Maximising payment success for merchants operating around the world

On Squarespace, merchants can design a website and begin accepting online payments quickly, with Stripe Connect and Stripe Payments providing the payments infrastructure. Connect facilitates the movement of funds among merchants, their customers and the platform itself.

To build a fast, versatile checkout experience, Squarespace implemented Stripe's Optimized Checkout Suite, including elements – a set of prebuilt payment UIs. Using the payment element – an embeddable UI component – Squarespace enabled a broad range of payment methods, including cards; local payment methods SEPA Direct Debit and iDEAL; buy now, pay later options Klarna and Afterpay; and Link, a digital wallet built by Stripe.

With this menu of regional payment methods, Squarespace helps merchants serve customers in the ways they prefer to pay. Link further improves checkout for Squarespace customers who already have Link accounts by enabling a faster checkout experience.

"The ease of adding wallets through simple configurations in the Stripe Dashboard has improved our ability to remove friction in this area," said Nick Nagao, director of product, monetisation at Squarespace.

Squarespace partnered with Stripe's professional services team to guide its Connect implementation. The teams worked together to unblock Squarespace's international rollouts and to create a more streamlined upgrade process to Squarespace Payments.

To further reduce friction and increase acceptance rates, Squarespace enabled Stripe Authorisation Boost and Stripe Radar, both part of Stripe's Payments Intelligence Suite. Authorisation Boost, a bundle of AI-powered acceptance optimisations, recovers false declines and reduces customer churn. Radar identifies and prevents fraud in real time with AI that is trained on data across millions of businesses on Stripe.

Expanding convenience and liquidity

In recent years, Squarespace has expanded from helping merchants sell online to helping them better manage the money their businesses generate. That evolution began in 2023, when Squarespace moved from Stripe-branded embedded payments to its own white-labelled offering, Squarespace Payments.

Squarespace made the change so it could offer greater flexibility to merchants by setting its own rates for online store transactions and payment acceptance and so it could enable merchants to manage their business all from their Squarespace dashboard. Zettler and his team worked closely with the Stripe team to ensure they could build the experience they wanted.

"Once we decided to build, Stripe was willing to have the kind of very open conversation – 'here's what we've seen go really well, or really poorly' – that you wouldn't expect from a vendor, but you would with a partner," said Zettler.

Squarespace Payments quickly gained traction, growing 100% year on year for the first two years. Building on that momentum, the company expanded into embedded financial services, including Squarespace Capital, which launched in the US in early 2025 and quickly expanded to the UK. Built on Stripe Capital for platforms, Squarespace Capital gives merchants access to fast, flexible business financing, with a quick application process and a one-time fee rather than compounding interest.

Soon after, Squarespace introduced Instant Payouts, which allows merchants to receive funds within minutes of a transaction, with technical guidance from Stripe's professional services team. The feature is especially valuable for the growing number of service-based businesses on the platform. For example, a photographer who gets paid for a Friday evening job can use those funds to pay an assistant for a Saturday wedding – without having to wait for the original transaction to settle.

Squarespace Balance, which launched in March 2026, further expands the company's support for entrepreneurs. Built on Stripe Treasury for platforms and Stripe Issuing, Balance keeps earnings, spending and cash flow management on the Squarespace platform – making it easy for merchants to run their business in one place. Merchants can access same-day payouts, earn cash rewards by saving in their Balance account and pay for expenses with a business Visa card – all within their Squarespace account. "This is a natural way to give our merchants easier access to liquidity and provide more value to them, without them having to open a separate account," said Zettler.

The Stripe professional services team guided the implementation of Squarespace Balance, supporting the initial US launch and guiding the upcoming UK launch and continued feature expansion.

A strong partnership looks to the future

Over the past decade, Squarespace has worked closely with Stripe to share priorities, brainstorm solutions and bring new products to market quickly. For example, Squarespace's interest in offering Squarespace Capital outside of the US helped influence Stripe's decision to make Capital available in the UK, with additional expansion planned. "It's been nice to be able to partner with the Stripe team in this way, so we can serve our merchants in the best way possible with the things Stripe is already looking to do," said Zettler.

Zettler and the rest of the Squarespace team continue to work with Stripe on future enhancements that can help merchants run their businesses more effectively, including exploring how stablecoins could expand their merchants' global reach.

"We love the idea of helping our merchants serve shoppers in even more regions," said Zettler. "Stablecoins would allow them to collect payment and have it quickly converted into a currency that makes sense for them."

Squarespace's partnership with Stripe's professional services team also ensures alignment across business units with the right context and priorities, while following implementation best practices and being built to scale for its merchants.

That commitment to innovation has been central to Squarespace's success over the past two decades. In the years ahead, the company plans to keep expanding the ways it helps entrepreneurs succeed – with Stripe continuing to play an important role in that journey.