10 Effective Tips for Secure Online Payments

Like any business owner, you have many concerns and responsibilities. To run a successful, profitable business, you need to have many processes in place in addition to having a capable staff and offering good products and services.

Among the myriad issues you worry about with your business is providing security for online payments. Your customers depend on payment security and expect you to safeguard their sensitive data anytime they provide personal information. If you cannot offer this to customers, they will become dissatisfied and leave. You could also find yourself in legal trouble if your customers’ financial information is exposed to a data breach.

In this article, you will learn about some effective ways to increase online payment security with your business. Regardless of the types of goods and services you provide, your customers need to have peace of mind that you will process their payments safely. This article will guide you through several tips on how you can improve your online payment security methods and make it easier for customers to make secure payments.

At Podium, we offer online payment tools that can enhance the way you manage payments with greater security. These tools help to increase customer satisfaction and confidence. In turn, you can improve your reputation and generate more leads. These can turn into paying customers and increased revenue.

With Podium’s tools, you can accept every payment method, including subscriptions and finance options. You’ll even be able to accept payment over text messages. Podium enables you to provide fraud protection and automatic reconciliation for your customers, which eases your ability to monitor sales and resolve past-due payments.

Aspects to Consider for a Secure Payment System

To improve your company’s payment security, you need to ensure certain aspects are in place. Some of the most critical factors include detecting and preventing fraud, providing compliance, and offering payment gateway and security. Once you establish these elements in your online payment system, you can have safety and security for your customers.

1. Fraud Detection and Prevention

Fraud is one of the biggest concerns that both small businesses and customers have with making online payments. When there is fraud with a payment transaction, the business may not be able to process payments any longer. If this occurs with your business, it could give you a black mark and hinder your opportunities in the future to attract and retain customers. Preventing fraud in the first place can spare your business many hassles and headaches. You can maintain a good public reputation when you can avoid fraudulent activity with your payment processing.

2. Compliance

Fortunately, regulatory, governing bodies and organizations, including national governments themselves, have set privacy and data security standards. These protect both businesses and their customers from fraud and other illegal activities. Your company should be aware of these regulations and standards. Moreover, ensure that you comply with these rules and laws so you can continue to do business in the areas in which you operate.

3. Payment Gateway Security

The method by which you accept and take online payments for your business is known as a gateway. This is where cybercriminals look to steal financial data, including credit card numbers and other personal card information. You need to have effective measures in place to deter, detect, and stop this activity from occurring. Furthermore, your customers must know that you have taken every step possible to enhance security for payments with your business.

10 Tips and Best Practices for Secure Payment Processing

Help and resources are available to improve and maintain secure payment processing. If your ecommerce business is struggling in this area, consider the following tips and how you can implement them into your secure payment system.

1. Use SSL/TLS Encryption

SSL (secure sockets layer) is a common method to improve payment security for businesses. SSL encrypts the communication you have with your business. The certificate appears in the customer’s web browser, so the individual can have peace of mind that they are providing payment to an actual business, specifically the one the customer set out to do business with.

SSL establishes a firewall around your business’s data. It also sets up an intrusion detection and prevention system to bolster security.

2. PCI DSS Compliance

Like just about any business, yours likely accepts payments by credit card. You must adhere to standards known as Payment Industry Data Security Standards, or PCI DSS. When you follow these standards, you control any access to sensitive payment information and scan for and protect against harmful software. PCI DSS also requires that you protect any account data, establish secure networks, and quickly respond and act if there are any malicious attacks with secure online payments with your company.

3. Tokenization

Tokenization is another security method for secure payment processing. It replaces sensitive information (typically credit card numbers) with another piece of data called a token. The token cannot be deciphered or changed. If an attacker breaches the token, it cannot breach the original value, such as a credit card or account number. Setting up tokenization can effectively prevent credit card breaches.

4. Two-Factor Authentication (2FA)

This is one of the most common types of online payment security. Businesses in many industries use it on their sites and apps. Two-factor authentication alerts you right away when a criminal is trying to breach your account with phishing or other scams. It helps you to change passwords and prevent illegal access. This additional layer of security requires the customer or cardholder to use more than just a password to make a payment on your site.

5. Regular Security Audits

Your business’ IT team should assess your online security efforts and processes regularly. In doing so, you should identify weaknesses and areas you need to improve. This audit may show where an attack is more likely or even imminent and what you can do to prevent it. If you own a small business, it may be best to hire an expert outside the organization to perform the audit, as this person may be able to provide a more accurate report.

6. Strong Password Policies

To access portals where customers can make secure online payments, you should require strong passwords. When customers must use difficult-to-guess passwords, it becomes much more difficult for cybercriminals to breach accounts. On your payment site, establish rules on creating passwords. This may include but is not limited to, disallowing the use of previous passwords, requiring the use of numbers, requiring the use of symbols and special characters, or disallowing consecutive duplicate characters. Obtaining a person’s password is one of the most common ways in which a criminal steals financial information. Helping customers to choose strong passwords can prevent this activity.

7. Monitor User Activity

Monitoring user activity is a vital way to secure online payments. It tracks the behaviors of people who access your sites from any device. Doing so can detect and stop threats and criminal activities. To monitor this activity, you may record user sessions, do keystroke logging, or implement file and screenshot capturing. If a user does something that appears to be high-risk you can be alerted to such behavior and identify the person as a cybercriminal.

8. Secure Payment Gateways

Accepting secure types of payments can reduce the risk of fraudulent activity on your payment sites. Along with credit cards and debit cards, you should accept other payment forms that already have security measures attached to them. These may include Google Pay and Apple Pay. Accepting electronic checks can also better secure your payment gateway or payment processor.

9. Regular Software Updates

You need to update the software you use to accept online payments and checkout consistently. Savvy cybercriminals will look closely for vulnerabilities in your system. Eventually, it becomes easier for criminals to breach your site and compromise cardholder data. By updating the software you use, you reduce the risks of unauthorized access and cyber theft.

10.  Limit Data Storage

Though it may seem convenient, storing customer payment data is an unwise move. This is a big target for criminals and can lead to security breaches. When you accept a credit card payment, never store the information, either electronically or on paper.

Protect Your Business With Podium’s Payment Processing

With Podium’s payment processing, your business can accept every payment method from your customers. This provides convenience and ease for everyone who does business with you. With this Podium solution, you’ll be able to take payments on all your sites and platforms, including when you and your customers communicate by text message. Another convenient feature is that it allows you to accept payments by phone with the ease of tapping a credit card such as a Visa or Mastercard to the device. To promote security with payments, the payment processing system has advanced safeguards, including fraud detection and automatic reconciliation.

Online Payment Security FAQs

Q: What is online payment security?

A: Online payment security includes the efforts your business makes to prevent data breaches and identify possible fraud in the financial transactions you have with customers.

Q: How do I make my online payment secure?

A: To bolster security on your payment processing platforms, you can implement any number of processes and measures. These include requiring strong passwords from customers, using two-factor authentication, using tokenization, and consistently updating the software you use to process payments. You can also regularly audit your security systems, monitor the activities of your users, and not store payment data on your site from customers.

Q: What are the security issues with online payments?

A: Online transactions occur frequently between businesses and customers. They are also vulnerable to attacks from cybercriminals and hackers. When defenses are weak, criminals can access customers’ bank accounts, steal passwords, breach financial data, and even harm the reputation of businesses.

Q: Which online payment method is most secure?

A: Multiple types of online payments are secure and are ones your business should accept. These are credit cards, payment apps, and ACH payments. PayPal and Venmo are other secure payment options.