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Manual Key Entry (MKE)

Manually enter card details to make a payment.

Using our Standalone solution?

If the terminal is not integrated with a POS system, see Standalone terminals for instructions to enter the card number by hand.

Manual key entry (MKE) involves manually typing the details from a shopper's card on the payment terminal. You can use this when the payment terminal fails to obtain the card details from the card's chip or magnetic stripe.

There is no liability shift with MKE. This means you are fully liable for fraud chargebacks.

How it works

  1. When the payment terminal cannot read the card details, you start an MKE transaction from your POS app.
  2. The terminal asks the shopper to manually enter their card number and expiry date.
  3. The terminal then asks the shopper to provide their signature on the display.
  4. The transaction continues.

Configure MKE transactions

Because of the increased risk of chargebacks, you need to take action before you can use MKE:

  1. Contact our Support Team and ask them to enable Manual Keyed Entry for you.

  2. Set a maximum transaction amount that the terminal will allow for an MKE transaction:

    1. Log in to your Customer Area.
    2. Optional. Select the merchant account or store where you want to configure settings.
    3. Go to In-person payments > Terminal settings (or select a specific terminal) and select Payment features.
    4. Enter the MKE max amount.

    5. Select Save.

Make an MKE payment

With a Terminal API integration, proceed as follows to force MKE as the card entry mode in your Terminal API payment request:

  1. Make a PaymentRequest specifying a PaymentTransaction object that includes:

    • TransactionConditions.ForceEntryMode: Keyed

    For a complete list of fields you can pass in a payment request and receive in the response, see the PaymentRequest API reference and the PaymentResponse API reference.

  2. In the response, note that the PaymentResult includes:

    • AuthenticationMethod: SignatureCapture.
    • CapturedSignature: coordinate points of the signature drawn on the terminal display.
    • PaymentInstrumentData.CardData: indicates the EntryMode was Keyed.

    The AdditionalResponse also shows the posEntryMode was MKE.

Risk management

You can use our risk management system to minimize fraud by applying risk rules before processing a transaction. Based on your risk settings, every transaction gets a risk score ranging from 0 to 100 and is declined when the risk score reaches 100.

See also