The safety of your customers’ sensitive payment information is important. But secure online shopping shouldn’t make payments difficult or time-consuming.
Instead — it should be efficient, intuitive, and friction-free. Here’s what you need to consider, without compromising security.
How can I take secure payments online?
Your online security approach should address three essential parts of secure payments.
- Fraud
- Security
- PCI DSS Compliance
Let’s break these down.
Fraud
Each year, Australian credit and debit cards are a target for over $460 million in fraud.
Credit card providers may limit or take away your ability to process payments. What’s more, customers lose trust in companies involved in fraud cases.
One survey asked consumers what they’d do if their online shopping account was compromised:
- 53.9% would delete their account
- 34.4% would shop elsewhere
- 20.7% would post about the experience on social media
Security
Fraudsters look for vulnerabilities in your business. These are easy points of access into your network so they can steal data like passwords, card numbers, and other card data information.
Any service provider offering payment services should have advanced cybersecurity defences in place.
PCI DSS Compliance
Regulatory bodies and governments have established privacy and data security standards designed to protect consumers and businesses. One in particular is the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS). You must understand and meet your PCI compliance obligations under these standards.
Read more: What level of fraud protection does my business need?
How to prove that you have a secure payment process & online payment methods
Today’s consumers are more aware of cyber threats and wary of their information privacy. This means secure online checkouts and website security plays a critical role in their shopping decision-making.
Here are some ways you can prove to your customers that you follow best practices when it comes to online security and payment processing.
Get a TLS/SSL certificate
A TLS (Transport Layer Security) — also still commonly referred to as its predecessor SSL (Secure Sockets Layers) — is a digital certificate that generates an encrypted connection between a web server and a browser. This prevents cybercriminals and fraudsters from reading or editing information in transit between the two systems.
Businesses that process payments online must add a TLS/SSL certificate to their website to keep customer data secure. To check if you already have this, navigate to your website and look for the padlock icon to the left of your URL in the address bar.
Become PCI DSS compliant
SSL protocol is a start, but to further protect sensitive data and avoid penalties, your business must comply with Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS).
PCI DSS outlines the requirements businesses must follow to ensure the safe and secure acceptance, processing, storage, and transmitting of cardholder data. These regulations apply to any organisation of any size — from national banks to start-ups — that process credit card payments.
Eway has the Merchant Trust Initiative to help you understand your obligations and responsibilities when it comes to handling your customers’ payment data.
Use network tokens
Tokenisation is an automatic feature of taking payments with Eway. Eway’s token payments feature is designed to boost repeat sales, minimise cart abandonment, and improve the customer experience without compromising security.
For Eway merchants, network tokenisation extends the benefits of token payments — specifically with Visa and Mastercard transactions.
Merchants can provide more robust security, a better payment experience, and card lifecycle management. So when a customer’s payment card details change or expire, they are automatically updated. Without the need to have new card details provided by the customer.
Implement 3D Secure 2.0 authentication
As the shift to online shopping has accelerated, there’s been an increase in card-not-present (CNP) fraud. 3D Secure 2.0 provides merchants a higher certainty that the transaction is authentic in the first place, which ultimately limits fraudulent activity occurring in the first place.
If a customer advises their bank that they didn’t make a purchase, you won’t be out of pocket if it was validated via 3D Secure 2.0. The bank covers any financial loss if the transaction is found to be fraudulent.
Read more: 9 merchant tools to fight card-not-present fraud
Leverage Eway’s payment gateway to secure your online payments
Cybercriminals may be implementing more sophisticated strategies, but anti-fraud tools are advancing, too. It’s worth exploring available tools to find the systems and safeguards that work for your business.
Eway’s advanced cybersecurity tools include everything you need to safeguard your business, customer data, and provide a secure way to pay. Get in touch with our team to learn more.
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