Hi @PiercedUpAus,
As a business who has suffered this 'ineligibility' nightmare with Afterpay ourselves, let me give you some tips.
For context, we're a barbershop in Brisbane who have had Afterpay since we opened in 2020 (in store only at the start).
We used Squarespace as our online store to sell hair and skin care products (not services, obviously!) – when Squarespace announced Stripe was integrating Afterpay, we were very excited because it was a huge thing our customers wanted for our online products. We immediately set it up, and got hit with the same message.
I contacted Stripe (who blamed Afterpay), essentially our business fell under the 'Services' category in Afterpay's merchant terms (in which case made us ineligible to use Afterpay on our online store despite using them instore for years) .... wtf right? How can we be providing services (ie haircuts) via our website was my question!? We're selling retail products. Which are not excluded in their terms. It wasn't rocket science taking this into account. And we wouldn't be the only one in this boat.
After weeks of back and forth between Stripe and Afterpay (Afterpay was useless btw), Stripe finally conceded and could see we were not doing anything dodgy and this was merely a weird grey area so I managed to convince them to change our category to 'Retail' or whatever it fell into in our profile.
All worked fine for a few weeks until randomly our website stopped showing Afterpay. Sure enough, they had re-assigned our account back to the services category which was ineligible, so I had to go through it all over again. Extremely. Frustrating.
Now that Square owns Afterpay, I suspect it will still be on Afterpay to sort this on their end (but if my experience with Stripe is still relevant, Square may also be able to override the business category on their end (which doesn't affect your overall Afterpay account it seems anyway).
Long story short, if you're selling physical goods that are not prohibited under Afterpay's merchant terms (read them carefully because they are quite expansive in nature), then reach out to Afterpay and explain this grey area of being a serviced base instore business, with an online store for physical goods. This was our issue, Afterpay has no issue servicing us instore, but because they categorise us as a service business overall, this carried through to online sales and made our account ineligible. Shows how stupid it can be having blanket rules like this that don't have real life scenarios considered.
This is an excerpt from Afterpay's terms specific to this topic:
Restricted Goods. You must not, without prior written permission from Afterpay, allow the Services to be used to purchase Restricted Goods or Services, as defined below, via Your Website or in-Store. If You are allowing the Services to be used to purchase any goods or services which Afterpay considers, in its reasonable discretion, to be dangerous, inappropriate or high risk, Afterpay reserves the right to prohibit the use of the Services to purchase such goods. You must notify us of any intention to commence advertising or offering Restricted Goods or Services for sale.
“Restricted Goods or Services” means:
(i) Gift cards, open loop cards or reloadable debit cards, payment cards that can be used at any location that accepts cards authorized by the payment card’s network, cash, or cash equivalents;
(ii) Goods or services that infringe third party Intellectual Property, including without limitation counterfeit goods and pirated content;
(iii) Dangerous goods, being goods that cause damage, harm or injury, including without limitation, recreational drugs or derivatives from drugs (chemical or herbal), psychoactive substances, equipment to facilitate drug use, weapons, ammunition, explosive materials and fireworks, instructions for making explosives or other harmful products, tobacco, e-cigarettes, and vaping products;
(iv) Adult goods, online streaming services and other content formats deemed offensive or of a sexual nature;
(v) Alcoholic beverages;
(vi) Gambling or gambling-related content;
(vii) Prescription drugs, regulated products, illegal drugs and testosterone boosters or sexual enhancement products;
(viii) Products that enable dishonest behavior, including without limitation hacking software or instructions, fake documents and academic cheating products;
(ix) Services, in the following categories: Pay-to-remove services; No-value-added services; “Experiences”; Financial services; Ticketing services; Software services; Health services; Auto services; Cleaning services and Other personal services;
(x) Without limiting the above, any goods or services which are required by law to be sold to Customers over 18 years of age.
