Squarespace, the US website and commerce platform, has spent three years building a suite of financial products for the businesses that run on it. Founded in 2003 and headquartered in New York, Squarespace has helped millions of customers across more than 200 countries and territories build websites, register domains, sell online, and book appointments. Since 2023, it has added three financial products in sequence: Squarespace Payments for payment acceptance, Squarespace Capital for financing, and Squarespace Balance, a money account with its own card. And Stripe sits underneath all three.
Anyone who has followed Shopify will recognise the shape of this. Shopify built its stack in the same order (EFR): payments first, then capital, then an account and a card, and even gave its account product the same name, Balance. Squarespace is walking the same path roughly a decade later. The order is worth taking one product at a time, because the same logic shapes both the sequence and how far each product has travelled.
Payments, the obvious first move
The starting point was Payments in 2023, when Squarespace launched its own checkout solution, replacing the third-party processor that merchants had previously connected to their store. From then on, merchants could manage all payment-related activities in the Squarespace dashboard, including payout controls and pricing. Payments come first because it is the most obvious win for everyone involved. Merchants had to accept payments anyway, which usually meant going to a separate provider and stitching them back into their store, with all the friction that entails. Bringing payments in-house removes that step and gives Squarespace a far better experience to offer, so the decision almost makes itself. It is also the layer that travels most easily: Payments now runs in fifteen countries, ten of them in Europe, and Instant Payouts reach the Eurozone. For a European merchant, this is the part of the stack that is fully available today.
Lending, where the platform grows with the merchant
Capital came next in 2025, offering merchants financing based on the sales history Squarespace can already see, with a decision in a few days and the funds shortly after. The financing is provided by partners rather than Squarespace itself, with Celtic Bank named as the US lender. Lending is second because it is where a platform can genuinely help its merchants grow, and the value is less in the loan margin than in the value of a larger merchant over time. Squarespace already holds the sales data needed to underwrite well, so financing becomes a way to grow alongside its customers rather than just a fee line item. That same growth case holds everywhere, which is why lending travels well after payments: Capital reaches the UK and, since May 2026, Germany as well. In Europe, the financing appears to run through Stripe and YouLend, which are listed as lending partners in various sources. Shopify took years to bring its own Capital product to a handful of European markets (EFR), so Squarespace adding Germany this early is worth noting.
Banking, the layer that comes last
So why does the account come last? Because it adds the least on its own and asks the most in return, in operational overhead and touch points. Squarespace Balance followed in March 2026, a financial account that holds a merchant's earnings, pays cash rewards on the balance, and comes with a Visa business card. The funds are held at Fifth Third Bank, and the card is issued by Celtic Bank, and for now, Balance is only available in the US. Its real use is as a base to build on, and Shopify has been open about wanting its Balance account to sit at the centre of the merchant relationship and to launch further products from, which is how bank accounts tend to work, the place a lot of other activity starts from. Useful and good for retention, but only once payments and lending are already there. It is also the hardest layer to take abroad. A European version means local IBANs, a European banking partner, and a licence in the region, which only pays back in a platform's biggest core markets. Shopify launched its Balance account in 2020 and, six years on, still has not taken it outside the US. Whether Squarespace pushes the account into Europe the way it is now pushing lending, or leaves it at home as Shopify has, will be seen over the next few years.
