Virtual Card Services (VCS )

The Virtual Card Services (VCS) Virtual Terminal extension allows you to accept payments on your WooCommerce site using the South African payment processing platform.

Customers are directed to your merchant account on the VCS website to complete payment with their credit card, then returned to your website where they can continue browsing.

• An active VCS Virtual Terminal account
• South African Rand (ZAR) set as your store’s currency

1. Download the .zip file from your WooCommerce account.
2. Go to: WordPress Admin > Plugins > Add New and Upload Plugin with the file you downloaded with Choose File.
3. Install Now and Activate the extension.

More information at: Install and Activate Plugins/Extensions.

1. Go to: WooCommerce > Settings > Payments.
   Note: ‘Payments’ formerly called ‘Checkout’ prior to WooCommerce 3.4.
2. Select Virtual Card Services. You are taken to the Settings screen.
   
3. Configure your settings:
   • Enable/Disable – Enable to use. Disable to turn off.
   • Title – Choose the title shown to customers during checkout
   • Description – Add info shown to customers if they pay with VCS
   • Terminal ID – Enter from your VCS account.
   • Personal Authentication Message – Should be the exact same text in both your WordPress admin and VCS.
   • Test Mode – Tick the box if in development or test mode. Untick to disable when ready to go live.
4. Virtual Terminal Setup
   • Website URL, Approved page URL and Declined page URL are provided for you to copy/paste into your VCS account (see below)
5. Save changes.

A few areas of the VCS virtual terminal require basic setup.

1. Go to: Merchant Administration.
2. Select Section 3: VCS Interfacing (page1) once logged in.
3. Enter Website URL, Approved page URL and Declined page URL.
4. Set HTTP Method to POST.
   
5. Visit VCS Interfacing (page2) and set your PAM to be the same message as Personal Authentication Message in your WordPress admin.
   

VCS needs to be in Test Mode by ticking the box when developing or testing; no live payments are taken. This is the default setting when a new terminal is created, and is shown by a red tag saying Test Mode in the top-left corner of your VCS Virtual Terminal.

When Test Mode is enabled in your WooCommerce settings, all transactions for VCS are logged on your server for reference during the testing period.

Remember to turn off test mode before processing live transactions on your store.

For testing purposes, VCS has provided the following test credit card credentials, each returning a specific response:

According to the VCS Virtual Terminal documentation:

“Any valid credit card number can be submitted to the test platform during the test phase as
the transactions are not sent to the banks for authorization and no real money is involved,
VCS simulates the response that would be received from a bank.

The following responses occur randomly with any other card number used:
“Invalid Terminal”, “Declined”, “Invalid Expiry”, “Batch Full”, “Call”, “XXXXXXApproved”.
Please ensure that sufficient testing has been completed before requesting activation as
once a terminal has been activated it cannot be reset into Test status without the loss of any
live transactions that may have been processed.”

Already purchased and need some assistance? Get in touch with a Happiness Engineer via the Help Desk.