Summary

Manual Entry is used for processing transactions over the phone or without a terminal, common in industries like framing/art and service/repair. It involves entering card details manually, either through a terminal or a secure web component. This method is considered high-risk and can incur higher interchange fees.

Manual Entry is generally used to process two types of transactions:

Over the phone

These types of orders can be a profitable and convenient method of taking payments especially in industries where it’s more standard practice such as the Framing/Art space or those selling wholesale. Sometimes these industries don’t have ecommerce websites where they sell traditional products and they can’t accept cash or check remotely so any order that needs to be shipped usually has their payment done over the phone.

Transactions without a terminal

Manual entry is also very common with service/repair industries where the technicians may be on-site with customers and do not have access to a computer or credit card terminal. Generally in these industries, a tablet or smart device is used to accept a deposit/payment before the full invoice is generated at the store for payment. In these scenarios, it’s not uncommon for the card to be tokenized for later use.

<aside> 💡 Note: In rare cases, the Virtual Terminal may also be used to process Manual Entry transactions however this is primarily intended if the point-of-sale (POS) goes down or is otherwise inaccessible.

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Availability

Some features, Manual Entry, are available on the PayFac but may not be available to all Brands. This may be due to additional integration work that might be required and/or other factors such as customer demand, dev priorities, or more. In this case, see the table below for which brands have access to this feature as of this moment.

<aside> 💡 Note: Manual Entry requires additional development to implement. Please have a supervisor speak with your local Product team if you feel this feature may be of interest to your industry or Brand and we can get it enabled.

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Processor

Operation

Manual Entry is considered Card Not Present. Even if the card is physically present and used to enter the card details, because it’s not tapped, inserted, or swiped, there’s no way for the card brands to know if it was physically present at the time of the transaction. This type of transaction is also considered High-Risk which means that interchange can potentially be significantly higher than a Card Present or even other Card Not Present transactions. For Flat Rate merchants this won’t matter but for anyone on IC+, they should expect to pay more for these types of transactions.

Manual Entry can be done one of two ways which depends on the capabilities and/or limitations of the POS.

1. Through the terminal. In some cases, manual entry may be done through the credit card reader. The way this works is the POS will have a button in the register that says something like ‘Manual Entry’. When this is pressed instead of the normal transaction flow on the device, it will show fields to manually enter the card details including the associated zip code.

1. Web Component. The recommended approach, when possible, is to do manual entry through the point-of-sale (POS) using the PayFac’s secure web component. With this method, the clerk starts the transaction and selects something like ‘Manual Entry’ and instead of it going to the terminal, secure fields are available for the clerk to enter the card details directly through the POS. This is the more secure route since it doesn’t allow potential fraudsters to use the terminal directly and instead the clerk is responsible for entering the information. This is also the more streamlined process since the clerk doesn’t have to turn the terminal around to enter the details or have the shopper enter the card information themselves.