Whether you prepare taxes in a brick-and-mortar storefront location, in your home, or on the road, you can easily hand-key credit, debit, or ACH payments using a virtual terminal.

A virtual terminal allows you to securely process transactions without:

  • A physical credit card terminal
  • The need to swipe/insert your clients’ cards

How Does a Virtual Terminal Work?

With a virtual terminal, you simply log into your payment processing account using any device with a secure Internet connection. Thereafter, you manually key in the payment details of the client, including:

  • Credit card or bank account number
  • Expiration date
  • Card verification value (CVV)

When you click “process,” the transaction goes through just as if you had physically swiped or inserted a chip card. Once the sale is verified, both you and the client receive an email confirmation.

What Are the Benefits of a Virtual Terminal?

Whether you are a home-based practice or a large corporation, a virtual terminal offers a number of important advantages, including:

  • The ability to reach a much larger audience — without meeting clients face-to-face and without building an online payment form. You can even process transactions on the road.
  • Fewer startup costs. To begin virtually processing credit card or ACH payments, you only need a merchant account and a device with an Internet connection.
  • Fewer maintenance costs. Even the best POS terminals in the world need to be serviced from time to time. As new compliance rules emerge, some credit card readers need to be replaced entirely. Upgrading to the new EMV standard, for example, is costing American retailers billions of dollars. By contrast, your virtual terminal is always up-to-date since it’s an online portal — not a physical machine.

Your clients also benefit from this technology.

Many people rely heavily on credit cards rather than cash or checks, and they wouldn’t be able to pay for your services immediately if you didn’t offer the ability to process their cards through a virtual terminal.

How Secure Are Virtual Terminal Payments?

If you choose the right payment provider, virtual terminal transactions are incredibly secure. A trusted processor:

Is a Virtual Terminal Right for You?

Depending on the needs of your tax preparation practice, a virtual terminal may be the perfect solution for expanding your reach and growing your business. To learn more, click on the free links below:

Alternatively, you can contact our payment team directly to expand your payment acceptance options today.