Virtual Cards 💳

When onboarding merchant locations, the best practice is to obtain the MIDs directly from your merchant partners as early in your sales process as possible. 

You can both expedite and increase accuracy by including the MID information when adding the locations in the Fidel dashboard (refer here on how to do that). 

We know that it's sometimes easier said than done: the merchants may not know what a MID is or cannot locate it, or you are unable to make a transaction with an enrolled card to uncover the MID via a missing transaction investigation. When this happens, there is a possibility that the merchant locations will fail to onboard with the card schemes. 

Due to the aforementioned circumstances, we have created an alternative solution to help you obtain your merchants’ MIDs and rectify the onboarding with Visa and MasterCard. 

In this article, we’ll walk you through the process of using your funded virtual card. 

1.  The first time you access the Locations page in the Fidel dashboard, you will be presented with a pop up giving you the option to ‘Activate your free virtual card’. 

2.  Alternatively, you can activate your virtual card from Account settings > Virtual cards. Again you will be given the option to ‘Activate virtual card’.

3.  Regardless of whether you use Step 1 or 2, you will need to provide the cardholder’s full name and email address, then click ‘Done’ to complete the card activation process. 


4.  The Virtual card section of the Account settings page should refresh and display your card.

5.  You can add your virtual card to your Apple Pay or Google Pay wallets to facilitate usage as a contactless payment method in-store.

• Click on the ‘Show’ button to review your virtual card details and then manually add them to your digital wallet.
• Now you are set to begin utilizing your virtual card with merchants where the onboarding has failed because no MIDs or the wrong MIDs were submitted initially.

6. Virtual card transactions are processed the same way as regular card transactions. 

• If you are doing an in-store transaction - visit the merchant and make a purchase with the card from your digital wallet OR pass the virtual card details to the merchant to process the transaction.
• If you are doing an online transaction - make a purchase from your merchants’ website the same way you do with any online purchases on your personal payment card, but instead use the virtual card.

Note: Fidel funds this virtual card for you free of charge. However, the limit is a maximum of $2.00 USD equivalent per transaction and up to 5 transactions per day. 

7.  After the transaction is done at the merchants, the next step is to link the virtual card transaction to the corresponding location in the Fidel dashboard. Select the Program and then go to the Locations page. Next, you need to locate the merchant location, click the ‘Not found’ status on either Visa or MasterCard and then click ‘Link virtual card transaction’.

8. You will then be presented with a list of transactions that were made with your virtual card. Match the transaction with the specific location and click ‘Done’.

9. Fidel will then use the MIDs received through the virtual card transactions to onboard the locations that previously failed. If you selected the wrong transaction and fixed the location with it, please contact [e-mail] as soon as possible. 

10. If the initial onboarding failed on both Visa and MasterCard, you will only need to link the virtual card transactions once on either card scheme and Fidel will automatically re-initiate the onboarding with the other scheme. The Visa status should change from ‘Not found’ to ‘Active’ in real-time if the onboarding is successful, while the MasterCard status will take a couple of days to update.  

Note: Unfortunately, the virtual card transactions can only be used to facilitate onboarding with Visa and MasterCard. If you are having issues with onboarding locations with AMEX, you will have to speak to your merchants to obtain their SE (Service Establishment) numbers.