Prioritizing Your Security Measures for Credit Card Payments

Today more people want to use credit cards as opposed to cash when paying for items. This means that if you accept credit card payments, you can also draw in more business. It doesn’t matter whether you do business online, or off, or a combination of the two - accepting credit cards is a major business decision.

And, whenever you talk about credit card payments acceptance, you also need to talk about protection solutions including fraud and data security.  Security measures need to be prioritized based on your business—your requirements should also help you choose which providers to go with including your credit card payments provider. After all, if you are going to provide convenience and allow people to pay with credit cards, you want to make sure that the security is in place so that there isn’t any kind of fraudulent activity. And, if there were ever a data breach, it could cost you as well as your customers a significant amount of money.

SSL with encryption

SSL with encryption is perhaps one of the most important security measures. This ensures that the payment data is securely transmitted. There are 128 and 256 bit encryption strengths, and therefore you want to make sure you know exactly what you are getting. The stronger the better, simply because it is capable of locking out more hackers. Without encryption, you're very possibly just waiting for someone to tap into a ready pipe of customer card data and personally-identifiable information.

EMV chip card vs. magnetic stripe

When you take payments in person, you now have the EMV chip card acceptance option, not just magnetic stripe. The sooner you have the option to upgrade to EMV chip card acceptance, the better. Chip cards are going to generate a one-time code with each transaction, which virtually eliminates the possibility for counterfeit cards. Research suggests that after the European Union's migration to EMV an 80% decline was seen in in-store credit card fraud. The United States has seen a 47% increase in credit card fraud, demonstrating the need to accept via EMV as opposed to the magnetic stripe.

Another factor to consider when prioritizing the role of chip card acceptance for your business—the October 1, 2015 liability shift.  This shift is now in effect. In a nutshell it says, whichever player is weakest in the chip card acceptance link takes liability for fraudulent transaction claims.  That means if you're not ready and your business is susceptible, there could be real consquences on the chargeback front.

Fraud protection

Fraud protection should be considered across different aspects. This starts with card presentment at point of sale—one of the many things driving EMV chip card acceptance. It includes fraud detection and prevention during the payment authorization process by identifying possible fraudulent transactions based on data confirmed by the issuer of the card, which can help to avoid costly chargebacks.

Many credit card processing companies only offer the one aspect – for example, basic fraud detection and protection during payment authorization. Many providers offer more advanced fraud detection and prevention tools that, for example, can detect fraud across more dimensions.

Chargeback prevention

The majority of chargebacks are because of fraud. When prioritizing security measures, you might consider just how susceptible your business is to claims of fraudulent transactions.  Again, this might start with upgrading the point-of-sale to EMV chip card acceptance. It might also be important to consider chargeback services to help manage the costs associated with claims of fraudulent transactions. 

Making a decision

It's important to understand that there are multiple types of cards and transactions that can be made. The magnetic stripe credit cards are still more abundant, though credit card companies have issued the EMV chip cards widely now and we can expect this to continue.

By taking the time to prioritize the security measures, it will educate you more on the various forms of security that are available and ensure that you make good decisions about who you choose to work with.

When you're looking for the ability to accept credit card payments, security measures need to be taken seriously. It’s not as simple as accepting credit cards because if there is any fraud or data compromise, it could result in a loss of trust between you and your customers, money for your business as well as your reputation.

Security measures need to be taken when accepting credit card payments. Learn to prioritize the measures with the help of Vantiv.