Introducing Paystack Virtual Terminal in Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa!
Accept secure in-person payments with real-time confirmations and ZERO hardware costs
In 2023, we introduced Virtual Terminal in Nigeria, enabling businesses to accept in-person payments swiftly and at scale, with ZERO hardware costs. Today, we’re excited to announce that Virtual Terminal is now available to Paystack merchants in Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa.
What is Paystack Virtual Terminal?
Paystack Virtual Terminal is a simple, hardware-free solution for businesses that accept in-person payments, such as retail stores, restaurants, or pay-on-delivery services. It streamlines your payment processes by integrating Paystack’s seamless online checkout experience directly into your physical location, complete with real-time payment notifications to alert you about transactions.
With Paystack Virtual Terminal, you can generate unique QR codes for any customer-facing staff, such as cashiers, delivery riders, or sales agents. When a customer scans the QR code, they can choose to pay via any of Paystack's multiple payment channels—Mobile Money, Cards, Apple Pay, and more.
After the successful payment, the staff member gets an instant confirmation via WhatsApp, and the customer can be on their way.
Virtual Terminal is optimized for the most popular payment channel in your country
With a single QR code, Virtual Terminal offers customers in each country a variety of payment methods optimized for that region.
Côte d’Ivoire
Available payment methods: MTN MoMo, Wave, Orange Money, Visa, Mastercard, and Apple Pay.
Ghana
Available payment methods: MTN MoMo, Telecel Cash (previously Vodafone Cash), AirtelTigo Money, Visa, Mastercard, and Apple Pay.
Kenya
Available payment methods: M-PESA, Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Apple Pay.
South Africa
Available payment methods: Scan to Pay, SnapScan, EFT, Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Apple Pay.
Why businesses love Paystack Virtual Terminal
Scale in-store payments across multiple staff and locations, in seconds
Virtual Terminal dramatically simplifies your business operations. Whether your business operates with a single sales agent or spans a network of 1,000 across multiple stores in various cities, Virtual Terminal is incredibly easy to scale geographically.
You simply create as many QR codes as you need and assign them to your sales agents, all from your Paystack Dashboard. This eliminates the operational burden of managing multiple physical POS devices, while significantly cutting your costs.
Allow sales agents to confirm payments, without seeing bank balances
When you assign virtual QR codes to your sales agents, they receive WhatsApp notifications for successful payments. The “successful payment” alert with the amount received is the only thing that the agent sees: the notification does not contain any additional information, such as the total amount of money your business has received. Only you, the administrator of the business, can access that information via the Paystack Dashboard.
Additionally, you can disable a Virtual Terminal QR code at any time, change the WhatsApp number tied to it, and also set it up so that multiple WhatsApp numbers receive an alert when a payment is made.
Give your customers a wide range of in-person payment options
Each Virtual Terminal account comes with a beautiful, autogenerated poster that you can print from the Paystack Dashboard and prominently display to inform customers about the wide range of payment methods available to them.
Some businesses choose to display this poster as a table tent, while others create a smart-looking lanyard that staff can easily carry around.
However your customers prefer to pay, you’ll be able to accept that payment seamlessly, and all Virtual Terminal payments are ultimately deposited into your preferred payout bank account.
Here’s how to download your Virtual Terminal posters →
All the other benefits that come with accepting payments with Paystack
Virtual Terminal comes with all the other benefits of the Paystack ecosystem of products:
- International payments: With Virtual Terminal, your international customers can reliably scan to pay with their foreign-issued cards or Apple Pay.
- Split payments: If you run a company that has several lines of business, Virtual Terminal allows you to receive one payment and automatically split different amounts into separate business bank accounts.
- Easy end-of-day accounting: If you run multiple stores and also accept payments online, you can get instant visibility into all your transactions — online and offline — on your Paystack Dashboard for reconciliation. You also get useful, granular data on each sale made via each Terminal, so that you can instantly identify your best sales reps, and most profitable stores.
- Track all payments from your phone: You can easily monitor all your payments from the Paystack Merchant App (iOS and Android). Download the app to get started!
- and so much more!
Get started with Virtual Terminal
Virtual Terminal is available to Paystack businesses in Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa.
Learn how to set up your Virtual Terminal →
🎯 Get your Virtual Terminal
Start accepting in-person payments in all your locations with Virtual Terminal.
Get your Virtual Terminal →Join us for a live Q&A
Discover how businesses of all types and sizes are utilizing Virtual Terminal to transform their payment processes. Join our Live Q&A session to learn how different kinds of businesses use Virtual Terminal, learn how to set up Virtual Terminal for your business, and get your questions answered in real-time.
We have two webinars lined up: one for English-speaking merchants in Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa, and another for French-speaking merchants in Côte d’Ivoire.
Live Q&A: How field sales teams and retail businesses use Paystack Virtual Terminal to drive growth
📅 Date: Wed, June 26
⏰ Time: 1 PM (GMT)
Live Q&A: Comment les équipes de vente et les commerçants utilisent Paystack Virtual Terminal pour stimuler la croissance
📅 Date: Tues, July 2
⏰ Time: 2 PM (GMT)
Common questions
How much does Virtual Terminal cost?
Creating Virtual Terminals for your business is entirely free! All you do is log into your Paystack Dashboard, create as many Virtual Terminals as you need, and instantly deploy them to your sales agents.
As with most Paystack features, you only pay a small transaction fee per payment. Here's our pricing.
Which payment channels are supported on Virtual Terminal?
Virtual Terminal supports all the payment channels available on the Paystack Checkout form in each country:
- Côte d'Ivoire: MTN MoMo, Wave, Orange Money, Visa, Mastercard, and Apple Pay.
- Ghana: MTN MoMo, Telecel Cash (previously Vodafone Cash), AirtelTigo Money, Visa, Mastercard, and Apple Pay.
- Kenya: M-PESA, Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Apple Pay.
- Nigeria: Bank, Transfer, USSD, Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Apple Pay.
- South Africa: Scan to Pay, SnapScan, EFT, Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Apple Pay.
How many Virtual Terminals can I create?
You can create as many Virtual Terminal units as your business needs, for free.
In which countries can I use Virtual Terminal?
Registered Businesses in Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa can use Paystack Virtual Terminal.
Will my Sales Agents see the total amount received by my business?
No. While sales agents will receive a WhatsApp notification to confirm that a payment was successful, they won't be able to access any other payment information.
Are there other ways to receive instant notifications other than WhatsApp (eg. via SMS)?
Currently, Virtual Terminal only sends payment notifications via WhatsApp.
Can I change the WhatsApp number assigned to a Virtual Terminal?
Yes, you can change the WhatsApp phone number tied to each Virtual Terminal at any time. You can also assign multiple WhatsApp numbers to receive alerts from the same Virtual Terminal.
Can I, the business owner, also receive the transaction notifications?
Yes, you can add your WhatsApp number to all your Virtual Terminals to receive transaction confirmation notifications at the same time as sales agents. Your Paystack Dashboard also gives you a real-time look at all the transactions across all Terminals. You can also monitor all your payments with the Paystack Merchant App (iOS and Android).
Download the app to get started.
Where will my money get settled?
When customers pay, we settle your money into the same payout bank account we use for any another payment you collect with Paystack. You can update this preferred bank account at any time.
Do you have any questions?
With Virtual Terminal, we’re excited to provide yet another way for businesses with a field sales component to get paid, without the operational headache of hardware logistics.
If you have any questions at all, come chat with us at the live Q&A (English version, French version) or kindly send us a message. We're happy to help! 💙
