Get Started with Virtual Terminal
About Virtual Terminal
With Square Virtual Terminal, you can charge a customer or build itemized carts—all from a web browser on your computer. Virtual Terminal is ideal for remote billing or taking card payments over the phone.
Before you begin
To use Square Virtual Terminal, you’ll need to sign in to your Square Dashboard.
Be sure to have a compatible web browser on your computer such as Google Chrome, Apple Safari, Mozilla Firefox, or Microsoft Edge.
Take a payment with Virtual Terminal
You can create and settle a single sale or transaction using Virtual Terminal. To start:
Sign in to Square Dashboard and go to Orders & payments (or Invoices & Payments or Payments) > Virtual terminal.
Select Take a payment.
Choose either Quick charge or Itemized sale.
Under “Transaction details,” enter a custom amount, search your item library, create new items, or scan a barcode.
Add any relevant discounts, service charges, tips, and notes.
Under “Payment details,” optionally add a customer to the transaction and choose your payment method. You can also choose how the customer will pay.
Review the transaction details, then click Charge.
After you see the payment has been recorded, you can send a digital receipt to your customer via email or SMS. You can also print the receipt on a connected printer, or via the Square Terminal printer if your Terminal is connected.
In addition to manual payments, you can:
Accept split tender payments: Continue processing the split payment amounts until the entire sale has been completed.
Connect Square Terminal to Virtual Terminal: For details, check out how to Connect Square Terminal to Square Virtual Terminal.
Send a payment link via text: This enables the customer to complete checkout from their mobile device.
Use recurring payments with Virtual Terminal
To use recurring payments, you’ll need to add a customer’s Card on File prior to scheduling. The first charge in the recurring series will occur immediately in Square Virtual Terminal. All subsequent charges will occur via recurring Square Invoices, which you can manage from the Invoices section of your Square Dashboard.
- Sign in to Square Dashboard and go to Orders & payments (or Invoices & Payments or Payments) > Virtual Terminal.
- Select Take a payment.
- Select Quick charge to charge a custom amount, or Itemized sale to add an existing item to the sale. You can also scan a barcode.
- Add an optional discount, tax, service charge, tip, or note.
- Click Add a customer to choose an existing customer with a saved card on file.
- Click Make this a recurring payment.
- Select a daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly interval.
- Choose whether to end the recurring series on a specific date, after a certain number of payments, or never.
- Click Save.
- Review the recurring payment details, then click Charge to confirm.
Your customer will receive a digital receipt for this and all subsequent recurring charges.
After, you can manage a recurring payment series from your Square Dashboard, the Square Point of Sale app, and the Square Invoices app. Any edits made to items, modifiers, discounts, or taxes will reflect across subsequent recurring payments in the series. To start:
- From Square Dashboard: Go to the Invoices section of your Square Dashboard and click on Recurring series.
- From Square Point of Sale: Go to the Invoices section of your Square Point of Sale app and use the filter to view any of your recurring series.
- From the Square Invoices app: Go to the Invoices section of your Square Invoices app and use the filter to view any of your recurring series.
Accept zero amount payments with Virtual Terminal
There may be instances where you need to accept a $0 payment, such as when you’re accepting a payment outside of Square or your customer pays for a transaction in full using a coupon.
Note: Receipts aren’t automatically generated for $0 transactions. To view and send a receipt, click on the newly recorded transaction on your Virtual Terminal.