Checkout Consents, Wording and Trust Block

A privacy checkbox, a digital content waiver for EU buyers, an age check. Most stores add these with a snippet that shows a box but keeps no record of what the customer actually agreed to. Then a digital buyer still has to type a street address they don’t need, and the checkout headings say whatever WooCommerce says.

Checkout Enhancements handles all of that in one place. It adds consent checkboxes that store proof on the order, shortens the checkout when nothing ships, lets you rename fields and headings, and puts a short trust block under the payment methods.

Find the Settings

Switch on Checkout Enhancements from Stackless > Dashboard, then open Stackless > Settings and choose Checkout Enhancements under Checkout. The page has five sections: Consent checkboxes, Shorter checkout for free and digital orders, Shorter checkout for virtual-only carts, Checkout wording, and Trust block under payment.

Add Consent Checkboxes

Under Consent checkboxes, the add buttons create a consent with starting wording:

• + Privacy policy: “I have read the privacy policy.” Required, all carts.
• + Marketing emails: “Email me product updates and offers. I can unsubscribe at any time.” Optional, all carts.
• + EU digital content waiver: wording about delivery starting immediately and losing the right of withdrawal. Required, carts with virtual or downloadable items.
• + Age confirmation: “I confirm that I am 18 or older.” Required, all carts.
• + Custom: empty wording you write yourself.

The suggested wording is a starting point. Check it against your own policies and local law, especially the waiver.

Each consent has these fields:

• Type
• Show for: All carts, Carts with items that ship, Carts with virtual or downloadable items, Carts where nothing ships, or Carts with a specific product (then pick the Product; variations of a variable product count too)
• Checkbox text, up to 600 characters. Links, bold and italic are allowed.
• Customer must tick this to place the order

You can add up to 10 checkboxes. Click Save changes when you’re done.

How Consents Work on Each Checkout

• Classic checkout: the boxes appear above the Place order button. A missing required box shows “Please confirm:” followed by the wording.
• Checkout block: each consent is registered as a WooCommerce additional checkout field in the order information step. WooCommerce shows or hides it based on the cart, and a missing required box shows “Please tick this box to continue.”
• On the Checkout block, links inside the wording show as plain text, because WooCommerce’s checkbox label is plain text.

The Proof Stored on Each Order

For every consent the customer was shown, the order keeps:

• the exact wording and its version
• whether it was required
• whether it was accepted
• the time, in UTC

Changing a consent’s text starts a new wording version, so the record always matches what that customer saw. The editor shows the current version as a “Wording v2” style badge.

The order edit screen has a Checkout consents box, and an order note lists each answer once. Removing a consent later doesn’t touch orders already placed.

Two checkboxes decide what customers see. Both are on by default:

• Show answers to customers: on the thank-you page and the order in My Account
• Show answers in emails: in order emails to the customer and the store

Developers can react to new records with the stackless_checkout_enhancements_consents_recorded action, which receives the order and the records.

Shorten Checkout for Free and Digital Orders

A buyer grabbing a free download shouldn’t have to pick a country or type a company name. Under Shorter checkout for free and digital orders, four switches ask only for what an order needs. All four are on by default:

• Free digital products: hides the company, country, state and currency selector when nothing ships and nothing is charged, meaning no item price, no fees and no subscription to bill later.
• Paid digital products: hides the country and state when nothing ships. Both stay visible while WooCommerce tax is on, because tax is worked out from the country.
• Coupons: hides the coupon form on the checkout page when the products are free.
• Free order button: relabels the Place order button when there’s nothing to pay.

A cart with anything that ships keeps every field. Free means the prices themselves are zero, so an order brought to zero by a coupon follows the paid rules. A subscription never counts as free, even with a free trial, because it bills later.

Hiding the country doesn’t leave the order without one. Stackless saves the first country it finds that your store sells to:

1. A signed-in customer’s saved country.
2. The buyer’s location from Cloudflare, when your site runs behind it.
3. WooCommerce’s default customer location.
4. Your store country.

If none is known, the country field shows as usual. Developers can change the saved country with the stackless_checkout_enhancements_hidden_country filter. Returning an empty string shows the field.

When the order total is zero after coupons and nothing bills later, the Place order button reads “Get it for free” on both checkouts. Change it in Free order button text, up to 60 characters. On those orders it replaces your Place order button text from Checkout wording.

To drop address fields on digital orders too, tick Hide fields under Shorter checkout for virtual-only carts. It’s off by default. When every item in the cart is virtual or downloadable, the fields chosen in Fields to hide are removed.

• You can hide Company, Street address, Apartment, suite, unit, Town / City, State / County, Postcode / ZIP and Phone.
• The default selection is Street address, Apartment, suite, unit, Town / City, State / County and Postcode / ZIP.
• Keep State if your tax rates depend on it. The country isn’t on this list, because the section above handles it.

All of this applies on the checkout page only, not in My Account or on the order-pay page.

Rename Fields, Headings and the Button

Checkout wording has a text box for each item. Leave a box empty to keep WooCommerce’s text.

• Field labels: Email address, First name, Last name, Company, Country / Region, Street address, Apartment, suite, unit, Town / City, State / County, Postcode / ZIP and Phone, up to 80 characters each.
• Headings and checkout text, up to 120 characters each: Billing heading, Order summary heading, and items marked (block checkout) or (classic checkout) that only exist on one of them, such as Payment heading (block checkout) and Ship to a different address (classic checkout).
• Place order button, up to 60 characters.

Renamed fields also change in the matching required-field messages. A custom Place order label replaces payment-method specific button text too, so a gateway that sets its own button wording gets yours instead.

Add the Trust Block

Under Trust block under payment, tick Show trust block (off by default) and fill in:

• Heading, default “Secure checkout”
• Reassurance lines, one per line, up to 6. The default line is “Payments are encrypted and processed by our payment provider.” Keep them true for your store.
• Payment methods image. Use an image of the brands your gateways really accept. Its alt text from the media library is used at checkout.
• Refund policy page, or No link
• Link text, default “Refund policy”

The block shows under the payment methods on both checkouts. On the Checkout block it’s placed by a script once the block has rendered.

Good to Know

• A Show for rule of Carts with a specific product falls back to All carts if no product is chosen.
• Layout and colors live in a separate module. See Choose a Checkout Layout.