Virtual Terminal

Before using the Virtual Terminal, get to know its basics by reviewing the documentation below.

By default, the Virtual Terminal is not enabled for your Fundraise Up account. To enable the Virtual Terminal, navigate to its settings page in the Dashboard and select Enable Virtual Terminal.

Donations processed through the Virtual Terminal incur your organization's pre-established platform fee.

By enabling the Virtual Terminal, you extend the scope of your PCI compliance to include your organization’s networks and computer systems. We recommend reviewing your device management plan to ensure that necessary security and privacy measures are in place.

There are five possible donation sources in Fundraise Up: Checkout modal, Campaign Page, Virtual Terminal, Recurring migration, and API. The source for any donation processed using Virtual Terminal is Virtual Terminal. This helps identify Virtual Terminal records in the Dashboard, Exports templates, and integrations.

All but one user role in Fundraise Up can access the Virtual Terminal and use it to process donations. Review the user roles below.

We recommend auditing the users added to your Fundraise Up account and reducing permission levels where possible. This helps you reduce the number of devices that are in the scope of your organization’s PCI compliance.

This section describes the six sections in the Virtual Terminal that provide access donation-related fields and properties during checkout.

The Campaign section at the top of the Virtual Terminal includes a property for selecting the Fundraise Up campaign that this donation should be associated with. Based on the choice of campaign, some fields and properties further along may be shown or hidden.

If designations are enabled for the selected campaign, a designation property is displayed that enables a user to select a designation for the donation.

In the Donation section, you can configure the donation as a one-time or recurring donation.

When the Recurring option is selected, you can set a start date for the recurring plan — the day on which the first installment will be charged. If One-time is selected, you can choose the date on which that donation will be charged.

The recurring plan frequencies available in the Virtual Terminal are: Daily, Weekly, Biweekly, Every 4 weeks, Monthly, Bimonthly, Quarterly, Semiannual, and Annual.

You can also set limitations on each recurring plan you create in the Virtual Terminal. You can set a cut-off limit for any new recurring donation plan by:

• Max plan amount: the total maximum cumulative donation amount for the recurring plan
• Max plan installments: the maximum number of installments that will be made
• End date: the date on which the recurring plan will be canceled

When you add a limit, the full Installment plan will appear on the right-hand side. If multiple limits are set for a recurring plan, the plan will be canceled as soon as any one cut-off condition is met.

The Donation section also includes the option to cover transaction costs for the donation. By default, the fee coverage amount is automatically calculated, but the amount can be edited by the Virtual Terminal user processing the donation.

As a best practice, we recommend verbally confirming the fee coverage option with a supporter when processing an in-person or over-the-phone donation through the Virtual Terminal.

The Supporter section includes fields for the supporter related to the donation. Using the search function, you can autofill information for your existing supporters. This functionality is enabled by default when you enable Virtual Terminal, but it can be disabled if required by your organization’s security policies. Similarly, you can configure the autofill functionality to be available to all user groups or you can exclude users with the Virtual Terminal Specialist role. Learn more →

Depending on the settings you have in place for the selected campaign, a few other fields may be shown, including On behalf of, which is used for attributing a donation to an organization, as well as fields for comments and tribute giving.

Unique to the Virtual Terminal, an email address is not required to process a donation. This functionality is useful for accepting donations from supporters that do not have email addresses.

If there are multiple languages enabled in your campaign, you will see a Language field in the Virtual Terminal where you can select a supporter's preferred communication language. This preference applies to emails and the default language of their Donor Portal. Supporters can change their language preference later in the Donor Portal.

The language selector shows only the languages that you have enabled in your campaign. If no additional languages are enabled, this option will be hidden. This feature is particularly helpful for organizations in multilingual countries, such as Canada, as it allows them to proactively accommodate their supporters' language preferences.

You can process a Virtual Terminal donation using any of the following types of payment methods:

• Card
• ACH Direct Debit
• Bacs UK Direct Debit
• SEPA Direct Debit
• BECS
• Canadian PAD
• Saved payment methods

For card-based payment methods, you can opt to process the donation without the card’s CVC/CVV security code. This option is configured from the settings page for the Virtual Terminal in the Dashboard.

You will only see a saved payment method if the supporter already has an existing recurring donation that’s being processed through Fundraise Up. Scroll down to learn more about saved payment methods in the Virtual Terminal.

If custom fields exist for the campaign selected in Virtual Terminal, they are displayed in the Custom fields section, and the Virtual Terminal user can input values for each field.

By default, supporters receive emails for donations processed using the Virtual Terminal. For one-time donations, the “One-time receipt” email is sent. For recurring donations, the “Plan receipt” email is sent if the recurring plan is set to process its first installment immediately. Alternatively, the “Plan scheduled” email is sent if the recurring plan is scheduled to begin on a later date.

There are two conditions under which emails are not sent to supporters:

• If no email address for the supporter is entered in the Virtual Terminal
• If the Don’t send email option is selected at the bottom of the Virtual Terminal

If you wish to display instructions, call scripts or other notes for your users alongside the Virtual Terminal, enable the Show additional notes during Virtual Terminal checkout option in the Dashboard settings for the Virtual Terminal and add your text.

When a recurring donation is processed through Fundraise Up, the payment details are tokenized and securely stored in Stripe. These payment details can later be reused to process new donations, both one-time and recurring, using the Virtual Terminal.

Compatible payment methods include:

• Cards
• Wallets: Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal
• Bank debits: ACH US Direct Debit

After processing a donation through Fundraise Up, the payment details are tokenized and securely stored in Stripe. These stored details can be reused for future donations of any type, whether they are one-time or recurring, using the Virtual Terminal. This means that supporters won't need to input their payment details again for each donation through the Virtual Terminal.

When a saved payment method is selected in Virtual Terminal, a warning will be displayed: “Confirm method with supporter before using.” This warning is designed to remind Virtual Terminal users to verify the card details or payment account information with a supporter before processing the donation. Taking this step helps reduce the possibility of charging the wrong payment method and having to issue a refund.

The Virtual Terminal is designed to help users process donations quickly and at high volume. This functionality is useful for call center environments, events, telethons and other live fundraising activities.

We strongly recommend notifying us in advance of any high-volume events where the Virtual Terminal will be used to process donations. This enables us to whitelist the IP addresses you will use for your event so that Fundraise Up’s anti-fraud tools do not flag your network and block traffic to the platform.

To notify Fundraise Up of an upcoming high-volume event, email us at support@fundraiseup.com.

Some options for the Virtual Terminal are configured from the settings area of the Fundraise Up Dashboard.

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