Processing an Order

In the Virtual Terminal, you can process new orders or Follow-On Transactions. Each is followed by a Transaction Receipt.

New Order

You may create a new order either in the Virtual Terminal or from a previous order that you find in the Transaction Search results. For more information on creating a new order from a previous one, see Follow-On Transactions. You can process either card-not-present or, if your account provider allows, card-present retail transactions.

By default, the Virtual Terminal displays only the fields required for a credit card transaction, such as the credit card number and the cost of the order as shown in the figure below. These fields always appear on the Virtual Terminal.

Credit cards are the most common forms of payment. To process a payment, you need to record detailed and accurate payment information:

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Form of payment and details associated with it: credit card number and expiration date to verify that the customer is legitimate and has sufficient funds to pay for the goods.

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Amount to bill your customer

You may also want to collect the customer’s card verification number, which helps Smart Authorization assess the risk of each order. For detailed information about Smart Authorization, see Configuring Smart Authorization.

After you have collected the payment information, make sure to record the detailed and accurate billing address so that you can correlate this information with the payment information. You may also want to obtain the customer’s email address and phone number so that you can contact the customer if you have questions about the order. In addition, you need adequate shipping information if you are to ship the goods.

Card-Not-Present: MOTO or Internet

You can process a credit card or a check order. You need to complete at least the required fields, starting with the transaction type.

Credit Card Transaction

For each credit card transaction, you specify the type of transaction:

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Authorization reserves funds on your customer’s credit card for this purchase. You need to capture the authorization to have the money transferred to your account.

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Sale combines authorization and capture in the same request.


	Credit card associations require that you choose Sale only if the order is fulfilled immediately, for example, for purchases at a retail store. For online orders, you must ship the goods before you capture the funds.

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Capture with verbal auth combines an authorization that you received verbally from the processor and capture in the same request.

This option is available for card-not-present transactions if your payment processor is TSYS Acquiring Solutions (Vital) or GPN. You can process a verbal authorization only with the same processor that gave you the verbal authorization. Otherwise, the transaction will fail.

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Credit refunds the captured amount to the customer.

This option refers to stand-alone credits only, which are credits not associated with an existing authorization. Stand-alone credits are available for card-not-present transactions if your payment processor supports these credits.

Level II and Level III fields can be included for Sale, Credit, and Authorization transaction types. To process a transaction as a Level III request, select the Process as Level III Purchasing Card checkbox. If not checked, the fields will be processed as standard Level II fields. For more information on these fields, see Level III and Additional Level II Fields.

Each processor supports a different set of Level II and Level III fields. If you submit a Level II or Level III transaction but omit required fields, your processor could charge you penalties or increase your fees. To find out if you can or should use these fields for your processor, see Appendix E, "Level II and Level III Field Requirements," on page 131.

Although the Address Verification Service (AVS) runs automatically for every credit card authorization, AVS data is ignored when no address is submitted for card-present (retail) transactions processed in the Virtual Terminal.

Check Transaction

For each check transaction, you specify the type of transaction as a sale, which is equivalent to performing a debit.

The Electronic check reference number is a field that appears only if your check processor is TeleCheck. This number is the TeleCheck Tracking ID that you received with your welcome email from TeleCheck. If you do not send this number with your transactions, CyberSource generates a check reference number and sends it to TeleCheck with each of your transactions.

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Debit when a customer makes a purchase. A debit authorizes the check and captures the authorization.

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Credit refunds the captured amount to the customer.

Card Present: Retail

If you have a card reader attached to your computer, you can process a retail transaction by scanning cards or entering the information manually.

When processing retail transactions, your Smart Authorization and Advanced Smart Authorization settings are ignored. As a result, card-not-present transactions that might fail may succeed as card-present transactions. For example, the card-not-present order of a customer with a very unusual name may fail if your Advanced Smart Authorization settings mark for review orders that contain obscenities or nonsensical input. However, the same order may succeed as a retail transaction because you can verify that the name is correct.

Note that you still receive an AVS code result for retail transactions even though these transactions may not include the customer's address.


	Although the screen captures below show the customer’s billing information fields in bold, which implies that they are required, you can choose to make the fields optional. In this case, they appear in normal type. To use this setting, see the online help for the Virtual Terminal Settings page.

The figure below shows the new transaction page enabled for retail transactions with the button called Click Here to Scan Card.

The figure below shows the page that appears after you click the button. On this page, you can either scan the card or enter the information manually.

The figure below shows the new transaction page after you have scanned the card. The card information is entered in the appropriate fields, and the transaction type selected is retail. You only need to complete the remaining required fields.

Partial Authorizations

If you are enabled for partial authorization and the balance on a customer’s prepaid card or debit card is less than the order amount, the Continue Order page displays. From here, you can enter the customer’s different form of payment to pay the remaining balance due. The customer can use as many additional payments necessary to complete the order or you can choose to capture the partially approved amount by clicking the Capture Partial Amount button. At any time, you can decide to cancel the entire order by clicking the Cancel Entire Order button. When the order is cancelled, CyberSource automatically performs a full authorization reversal on each of the partially approved transactions.

Enabling Partial Authorization

You must enable partial authorization to be able to receive and capture partial authorizations. Contact Customer Support to have your account configured for partial authorizations.

Follow-On Transactions

This section applies to payment cards only.

Follow-on transactions are created by using an existing authorization to process a re-authorization, sale (re-authorization and capture), or new order.


	Before creating a follow-on transaction, make sure that the original authorization that you want to use is not risky or fraudulent.

To process follow-on transactions, you must have the correct Virtual Terminal and Payment permissions. For more information, see Permissions.

Types of Follow-On Transactions

This section describes the types of follow-on transactions available in the Business Center and an example of each.


	For each authorization that you request, the customer’s available credit limit (open-to-buy) is reduced. Therefore, if you authorize the full amount of an order before knowing the inventory status, you risk impacting the customer’s available credit limit. Some card companies, such as Visa, require that you reverse any unused authorization amount. You may encounter customer service issues if you re-authorize an order without reversing the unused amount or if the card issuer does not post the reversal (card issuers are not required to do so). The best practices approach to authorization and capture is to authorize only the amount for the item that you can ship.

Partial shipment

Depending on your type of business or the availability of your merchandise, you may not be able to ship all the ordered items at the same time. For example, you may determine after authorizing an order that the order amount has changed or that the order must be divided into more than one shipment, such as when an item is back-ordered. You can use the Virtual Terminal to obtain a new authorization for each partial shipment by selecting the re-authorization link on the transaction details page, which displays the original authorization for the order.

The original authorization is good for 7 days for Visa and 30 days for all other card types. Although you can use an authorization older than 7 or 30 days to capture an order, you may be charged higher interchange rates. Some processors can re-authorize older authorizations on your behalf.

Re-authorization example. A customer orders two items for a total amount of $100.00. One of the items is not currently available. You can use one of these sample options to process the order.

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Option A: You authorize the amount for the first item and ship it. When the second item becomes available, you retrieve the original authorization, use its information to re-authorize the entire order, and ship the second item. You later return to the Business Center to capture the entire order.

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Option B: You authorize the amount for the first item and ship it. You return to the Business Center to capture the partial order. You repeat this process with the second item.

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Option C: You authorize the amount for the entire order, ship the first item, and capture the first amount. When the second item becomes available, you use the information from the original authorization to process an authorization for the second item, which you ship to the customer. You return to the Business Center to capture the remaining amount. If using this option, be aware that you are authorizing more than the total order amount and that you cannot reverse the excess.

In all cases, you use the original authorization information to process the second half of the order. You do not have to re-enter the order information each time: after retrieving the order from the Business Center, all the order information is placed in the Virtual Terminal. You only need to add the transaction amount and a new order number.


		Option A	Option B	Option C
First shipment	Authorization	$50.00	$50.00	$100.00
After the shipment	Capture	–	$50.00	$50.00
You clicked Re-Authorize.
Second shipment	Authorization	$100.00	$50.00	$50.00
After the shipment	Capture	$100.00	$50.00	$50.00

Re-authorization and capture example. A customer orders three $50.00 items for a total amount of $150.00. The first item is available today, but the other items will be available in two weeks. You process an authorization for the first item, ship it, and capture the authorization. When the other items become available, you retrieve the original authorization from the Business Center and use it to process a sale for the remaining amount.