This week’s release is all about control and compliance, helping you sell globally while staying within local regulations.
For digital product sellers, managing tax and compliance across countries can be complex. That’s why we’ve added two powerful updates to simplify how you control where your offers are available, and how those rules are enforced during checkout.
From setting clear country exclusions to automatically blocking restricted purchases, these improvements protect your business from unwanted sales, reduce compliance risk, and ensure every checkout aligns with your settings.
Every update is designed to save you time, prevent errors, and give you confidence as you scale internationally.
Summary
- Country Exclusion Settings for Digital Products: Choose exactly where your digital products can be sold to stay compliant with regional VAT and digital tax rules.
- Checkout Enforcement for Excluded Countries: Buyers from restricted regions now see a clear online message and cannot complete checkout, keeping you compliant and transparent.
Configure Country Exclusions for Digital Products
Selling digital products across borders is easier than ever, but staying compliant with international VAT and digital tax rules can be tricky.
With this update, ThriveCart now gives you the same control over digital products that you’ve always had for physical goods.
You can now configure country-level exclusions for each digital product, preventing purchases from regions where you’re not registered for VAT or can’t sell for regulatory reasons.
How it works
- Go to your digital product’s Pricing tab, and you’ll see a new section labeled “Available in the following locations.”
- Choose Everywhere (Worldwide) or specify countries to exclude from checkout.
- Once you add restrictions, ThriveCart automatically applies them at checkout, no manual setup or coding required.
- You can also customize customer experience messages, giving buyers a clear explanation if their country is excluded (similar to the “out-of-stock” feature).
This feature mirrors the familiar shipping exclusion modal for physical products, keeping setup fast and intuitive.
Why it matters
- Stay compliant with international tax and digital VAT rules.
- Avoid accidental sales in regions where you’re not licensed to sell.
- Keep customers informed with a professional, transparent checkout experience.
- Maintain consistent control over both physical and digital products, all from one dashboard.
👉 Available now for all ThriveCart users.
Find these options under your digital product’s Pricing → Availability settings.
Enforce Country Exclusions at Checkout
Compliance only works when it’s enforced, and now ThriveCart handles that for you automatically.
Once you’ve configured your digital product’s country exclusions, the system will automatically prevent buyers in restricted regions from completing checkout. This ensures your compliance settings are honored across every sale and payment method.
How it works
- When a customer reaches checkout, ThriveCart detects their location using their billing address or, if none is entered, their IP address.
- If the customer is in an excluded country, checkout is immediately blocked.
- They’ll see a clear online message:
“The product is not available in the country entered in the checkout. Please use a different address or contact the vendor.”
- The checkout or Next button remains disabled until a valid country is selected.
- All blocked attempts are automatically logged for your records, giving you full visibility and an audit trail if needed.
This applies across all templates and payment methods, ensuring a consistent and compliant checkout flow every time.
Why it matters
- Compliance enforcement happens automatically, no extra steps or integrations.
- Consistent protection across your entire checkout experience.
- Reduced compliance risk and greater peace of mind.
- Logged and traceable, every blocked attempt is recorded for accountability.
With this update, your ThriveCart checkout now works hand-in-hand with your compliance strategy, ensuring every sale aligns perfectly with your country settings.
👉 Available now for all ThriveCart users.
This feature activates automatically once exclusions are defined for a digital product.
That’s What’s New… What’s Next?
ThriveCart is home to more than 65K+ creators, whilst our unique product offering, Pro+, now supports over 33,000 merchants. It is our latest product release aimed at giving you and your business the greatest functionalities and capabilities in the industry. New features and updates will come thick and fast, so make sure you sign up to our mailing list and to our Facebook Community for the latest developments.
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Please note that as a Pro+ user, you will not be able to take full advantage of the sales revenue-generating and advanced reporting features if you have not configured your existing products with Stripe Connect+ and enabled it on your products. Click here to learn how to configure Stripe Connect+ in less than 5 minutes.