Preparation before switching to Fortis Pay EMV

Preparation before switching to Fortis Pay EMV


When will the switch happen?

Visual Matrix and Fortis Pay have scheduled and confirmed a date and time to take the EMV interface "live" at your property.
In order to ensure a smooth transition to the new EMV Credit Card Interface, please review this document as it outlines what to expect during the live process.

EMV Hardware

All hardware such as credit card terminals (pin pads) and other required devices will be purchased from Fortis Pay. Fortis Pay will have a technician to set up the devices on our scheduled installation date.
You will work directly with Fortis Pay to schedule your installation/testing date.
If you are a Best Western property, GLS has to add a Fortis permissions on their network. GLS can be contacted at mac@gls.com or 866-558-1920. It can take them up to 48h.

Before the Live Date

Designate a hotel contact
This person will work directly with support during the install process. The hotel does have to perform certain tasks during the installation process.

Have a credit card with a chip ready for testing
Details below on how the card is used during testing

Decide on how to handle In-House Guests staying over
You have two possibilities:
- Charge all in-house guests on the day of cutover (recommended): On each in-house guest, post the payment for the entire stay using the current authorization. This will charge the guest for the authorization that already exists and will not require any additional authorization request on the card after the switch.
- Do not charge the Guest (this will require the guest to present their credit card again after the EMV install): The credit card and the authorizations will not carry over to the new EMV system, all current authorizations will be released. Once the EMV install is completed, the hotel will have to contact the guest and request that he/she provides the credit card again so the hotel can re-authorize the card. This will hold a second authorization on the guest account until the first authorization is released (generally 3-10 days).

D-Day: Installation Process

This time will be used to configure the new EMV Credit Card Interface and will require some assistance from the hotel contact.

The first step in the installation process is to handle any existing credit card authorizations on the current credit card interface. Any authorizations you have for in-house guests will not carry over to the new EMV interface so at this time the hotel contact needs to inform our Agent whether they plan to charge all in-house guests or release authorizations for in-house guests (see details of those two options above).
This only affects in-house guests that are staying over. Any guests that are due out on the day of the install should have payment posted before the install starts.

After this step, Visual Matrix will settle the credit card batch for the day. Then we will use the remaining time prior to testing to finish setting up the new interface. All future reservations that have credit cards are converted to tokens during this process. During this time, the hotel will not be able to process, view, or save new credit cards in Visual Matrix until after testing is completed.

Fortis Pay Testing

Once all settings have been entered into Visual Matrix we will test the interface. Testing involves making multiple small charges on a credit card provided by the hotel.
We will make around 3 to 6 different charges that will vary from .25 to $1.00 each. The card can be either a debit or credit card but must have a chip.

We will test the following:
- Charge via chip
- Charge via swipe
- Charge via manual entry on pin-pad
- Voiding a payment
- Refunding a payment

Once testing is complete, you will be live on the EMV interface. Please feel free to ask any questions on how the EMV interface works. Testing is also used as a time to train the hotel on how to use the EMV interface.

    • Related Articles

    • Fortis Pay - Infos & Best Practices

      Visual Matrix PMS is the tool you are using to communicate with your gateway but Visual Matrix is not processing your credit card transactions. Visual Matrix communicates with Fortis Pay. Fortis Pay Contact Phone: (800) 761-8039 Fortis Pay Error Page ...

    • Preparation before switching to Elavon EMV

      When will the switch happen? Visual Matrix and Elavon have scheduled and confirmed a date and time to take the EMV interface "live" at your property. In order to ensure a smooth transition to the new EMV Credit Card Interface, please review this ...

    • Preparation before switching to Shift4 EMV

      When will the switch happen? Visual Matrix and Shift4 have scheduled and confirmed date and time to take the EMV interface "live" at your property. In order to ensure a smooth transition to the new EMV C redit Card Interface, please review this ...

    • Credit Card Transaction Process

      We do not think much about what goes into making the credit card process work. Simply insert a credit or debit card into a machine, and a few seconds later, the transaction is complete. However, behind this convenient payment option, the procedure ...

    • Saving Credit Cards: Manual Entry vs PinPads EMV?

      In Visual Matrix Since every credit card number has been tokenized, Visual Matrix does not keep credit card information on its systems. To ensure the highest level of security, we collaborated with many credit card gateways/processors (Shift4, ...