What makes a Virtual Terminal different from a Shopping Cart?
A Virtual Terminal is not integrated with the merchant’s website. Rather, it is a terminal apart from the website that allows the merchant complete access to their account giving them the freedom to charge customers’ credit cards and issue credits back to customers’ accounts manually. If they wish, the merchant can have a Shopping Cart linked to their website for automated charges and still use a Virtual Terminal to enter charges and credits manually. The key difference is that, with a Virtual Terminal, orders can be taken from pre-collected forms or telephone orders and entered manually. In this case, a Shopping Cart is not used. A merchant is however able to have an automated Shopping Cart and a Virtual Terminal, using both to process their online transactions. TOP Will the processor you use supply a Shopping Cart with my merchant account, and do I need to have one? No and No. In most cases, the processors do not supply Shopping Carts with their accounts. They only supply the Payment
