How Can I Prevent Credit Card Fraud?
The phrase ‘credit card fraud’ is terrifying for both you and your customers. To your customers, it conjures nightmares of drained savings and hiked bills. Plus, they’re placed in the difficult position of proving to their bank that they didn’t actually make those purchases. The potential damage to their credit report can be hard to recover from.
For you as a business, your credibility suffers. Every time a customer shares their harrowing story, their friends, family, and acquaintances trust your brand a little less. And because this kind of horror story has legs, it could continue to spread for years. Your best bet is to stop the mess before it starts by tightening your security measures.
Because of card skimmers, a lot of customers are suspicious of portable card readers. If your staff is using them to receive payments, ensure that your staff are in uniform and have clearly labelled ID. This way, the client has a starting point if they need to follow up.
Use deep-level encryption
End-to-end encryption is the best defense against any kind of data theft. It makes it harder for thieves and hackers to intercept customer information. Even if they do get their hands on it, it’s not in a format they can access or interpret. Find out the kind of encryption that your merchant processor offers.
Ideally, you should be looking for something that has military-grade encryption. You can also ask about your payment processor’s PCI compliance. PCI has 12 requirements that include encryption, restricted access to customer data, top-strength passwords, and firewalls.
Ensure that your payment processor is secure
Today, all card transactions are based on some kind of software. Whether it’s the programming on your electronic card reader or the shopping cart on your online store, there’s an interface involved. Make sure your payment processor’s website is certified for safety using an up-to-date SSL certificate. You can recognize this if the site url has https:// instead of just http://.
Of course not all your customers are web savvy, so it helps to reassure them in layman’s terms. Display a clear notice on your website, confirming their data is safe.
For more credit card fraud prevention information, or to sign up for a merchant account, please call (888) 924-2743 or go to Charge.com.
