How do I Know that Card Transactions are Secure?

The advent of e-commerce, which is a key hallmark of the digital age, has seen shopping habits rapidly evolve in tandem with the new technological advancements. These days, most goods or services can be procured online. This has necessitated credit and debit card payments, a fast and easy solution to pay for the aforementioned shopping. However, this is a double-edged sword, because the convenience comes with its own set of challenges, the main one being that the security of these transactions has to be guaranteed. Only strict measures can mitigate the threat that would-be cybercriminals pose when attempting to gain access to sensitive customer details.

How Online Credit Card Payments Work

From the onset, it’s essential to understand that the key players involved in a successful transaction consist of more than just the customer and the business. Other indispensable players include the card brands, the acquirers, and the banks which issue the cards, as well as other companies that could be facilitating the transaction. Cyber-attacks are most likely to target and exploit the weakest link in the chain of transactions. From the onset, customers must be vigilant and evaluate the website they are buying from before purchasing.

The basics of secure payment

A payment gateway, which is chosen by the business owners, is where one can proactively make sure that card payments are transacted securely on-site. All players need to look out for the following features of payment gateways with mitigated risk:

1. Securing transactions with the SSL protocol (whose symbol is typically a padlock icon in the URL bar, as well as a web address that starts with https). This ensures that sensitive data is protected by encrypting the information.
2. PCI DSS (or Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards), used in payment processing, provide guidelines which outline what merchants ought to do to secure sensitive data.
3. Tokenization reduces the risk of data breach by replacing sensitive data with a randomly generated set of characters. It is also key to note that sensitive customer data should never be stored on the business servers, and should be encrypted before being stored on those of the database.
4. 3D secure, a product created for debit and credit card payments, provides an additional line of defense, in which shoppers create a secure password for the card being used to pay. Every transaction is confirmed by password.
5. Anti-fraud tools, which vigilantly monitor transactions to counteract fraudulent activities.

In conclusion, one must make sure that the payment gateway chosen has solid technical support. This is imperative to enable prompt contact with the payment provider to troubleshoot any issues.

For more information on how one knows that card transactions are secure, or to sign up for a merchant account, please call (888) 924-2743 or go to Charge.com.