Reach a cart after the chat window closes
A basket left overnight could never be paid for — the payment request would not send once the 24-hour window shut. With an approved checkout-button template, the same request now still reaches the customer.
Released 17 August 2026
A basket that sat overnight became a basket nobody could pay for. WhatsApp only lets us send an ordinary payment request inside the 24 hours after a customer last messages. Miss that window and the request simply would not go — so the carts that most needed chasing were exactly the ones we could not reach: one held back for someone to check over, or one waiting on a delivery address the customer never got round to sending. The customer was left holding a basket with no way to pay for it, and the sale quietly went nowhere.
What's new
If your workspace has a checkout-button template approved by WhatsApp, the payment request now goes out on that instead when the window has closed. The customer gets the same basket, the same total and the same checkout button — just carried by a message WhatsApp still allows at that point.
It is the same request either way. The items, the amount and the order reference are taken from the request we would have sent anyway, so nothing can drift between the two, and it stays one order in your Orders list rather than turning into two.
Turning it on
You need a checkout-button template approved by WhatsApp first, then name it in your WhatsApp Orders setup. If your template's message has any fill-in-the-blank parts, you can set those too, including details like the customer's name.
Until you name a template, nothing changes: a closed window stops the request exactly as it does today.
One thing worth knowing — WhatsApp does not allow line breaks in a template's fill-in-the-blank parts, so the itemised summary cannot be one of them. The amount still reaches the customer on the checkout button itself.