Selling digital products across borders can introduce complex tax and compliance obligations – especially in regions with digital VAT laws like the EU, UK, or Mexico. ThriveCart now lets you configure country-level exclusions for your digital products, giving you full control over where your products are available and ensuring compliance without limiting your business growth.
Why It Matters
Previously, country exclusions were only available for physical products through shipping rules.
With this update, digital products now have the same flexibility — letting you exclude specific countries from purchasing where you’re not VAT-registered or legally permitted to sell.
This feature helps you:
- Prevent sales into countries where you’re not tax compliant
- Avoid unnecessary VAT or digital goods obligations
- Ensure consistent, compliant checkout behavior across all your products
How to Set Up Country Exclusions
You can define which countries your digital products are available in directly from your product settings.
To configure exclusions:
- Go to your Digital Product in ThriveCart.
- Open the Product tab and click the Pricing sub-tab.
- Choose Set product price (for new products) or Edit (for existing products).
- Below the “Limit quantity available?” setting, you’ll find a new section titled “Available in the following locations.”
- From here, you can:
- Select Everywhere (Worldwide) — the default option for all new and existing products.
- Or open the dropdown to exclude specific countries from purchasing this product.
- When you add exclusions, a new Customer experience settings button appears — allowing you to customize what the excluded purchaser will see at checkout.
The interface mirrors the familiar shipping exclusions used for physical products, making setup simple and consistent.
Customizing the Customer Experience
When a customer from an excluded country reaches checkout, you can decide exactly what they see and how the experience behaves.
In the Customer Experience Settings, you can:
- Customize the error message displayed to excluded purchasers (e.g., “This product is not available for purchase in your country.”)
- Choose whether to disable checkout immediately or show the message after the country is selected
- Review the text and layout, which follow the same logic as the “Set out-of-stock options” used for unavailable products.
This ensures your messaging stays clear and professional while preventing unintentional sales.
What Happens at Checkout
Once exclusions are set, ThriveCart automatically validates the purchaser’s country at checkout using a layered detection system:
- Billing Address or Contact Information — if your checkout collects this data.
- IP Address — if no address fields are configured.
If the purchaser’s country matches your exclusion list:
- An inline error message appears, explaining that the product isn’t available in their country.
- The Checkout or Next button is disabled (for multi-step templates).
- Once a valid, non-excluded country is selected, the message disappears and checkout re-enables.
All blocked attempts are logged for reporting and audit purposes, providing a compliance trail.
Consistency Across Payment Methods
This validation applies to all digital products and is enforced consistently across:
- Every checkout template
- All payment methods and gateways
No matter how your customer pays, country exclusions will always be honored.
Country exclusions for digital products give you complete control over your sales regions while keeping your checkout simple and transparent.
By combining powerful configuration tools with a smooth customer experience, ThriveCart ensures your business stays compliant – without limiting your reach.