Credit card swipers provided added convenience and speed to processing donations and can be an ideal tool to have available when accepting donations on site or in person. There a couple different ways you can use credit card swipers with BlueFire.
The first is using a USB credit card swiper with a BlueFire swipe-enabled donation, payment or event form. Using a laptop or desktop computer, you can plug the credit card swiper into an available USB port. The swiper, which may appear to be a keyboard to the computer, will transmit the hidden magnetic data to the swipe-enabled form. If this sounds like what you need:
- Order a USB credit card swiper that works in keyboard-emmulation mode. They are offered for sale on HaloPays’ website. You may be able to find one elsewhere, but we can’t guarantee it will work with our forms.
- To use the swiper on a BlueFire form, the form must be “swipe-enabled.” To do this, log into BlueFire, find the form you’d like to convert and select “Make Swipe” in the Action drop-down. When you open the form you will be able to swipe at anytime. You’ll notice that a minimum number of fields are required — if you do choose to swipe cards this will allow you to make the most of the added checkout speed.
The second swipe option would be to use the BlueFire mobile app for iPad and iPhone.
- Order a audio-jack credit card swiper for your device. They are offered for sale on HaloPays’ website.
- Download the BlueFire mobile app from the Apple App Store. (We don’t yet have an Android version — if you’d like to see one, let us know!)
- To use the mobile app you’ll need an “RID” and you can get this from BlueFire. Log in and go to the forms page. We recommend creating a new form to use with your mobile app so that you can customize the funds and receipt specifically for this use case. After you create the new form, look for the “RID” displayed under it. This is what you’ll need to plug into the BlueFire app and you’re good to go.
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