After the recent data breaches experienced at Neiman Marcus and Target which put personal information and credit card information in danger for hundreds of customers, people are becoming increasingly concerned about the way businesses handle sensitive data. According to a recent survey, 50% of the American shoppers claim to be too concerned about the data which might be stolen while shopping in the offline and online way because 60% of the customers are seen to make online payments.
Being a business owner, if you’ve got a merchant account for all the credit card transactions, you’re liable contractually to protect the credit card details of the customer. Here are few tips for the businesses to accept credit cards in a safe and smart way.
Tip #1: Use software and equipment which is approved
Regardless of whether you utilize a specific terminal for POS transactions or you’ve got a swiper that’s attached to your smartphone, you have to be certain about the fact that the payment processing software is PCI compliant. You might have the notion that anything that is available for sale would be okay to use but this is sadly not the case. There are many card readers and applications which have security loopholes and which make them hardly an ideal option. If you wish to boost your credibility as a business, you have to undergo several testing in order to ensure the product’s integrity. Make sure you use only approved and tested solutions.
Tip#2: Service providers should be approved ones
In case you don’t wish to run and install credit card processing software on your own, you may leverage a service provider who can handle processing of credit card information and help you with credit card account storage. There are service providers which include web-based SaaS providers and IVR phone companies and also few who allow you to outsource functions like payment processing. The service providers need to be tested rigorously so that you can be sure that the trust that you’re placing on them is well-deserved by them.
Tip #3: Don’t store card security number or electronic data in any form
You might have a specific reason to store credit card details; processing rules will forbid the storage of the security data of a card or track the data in any form. The data that is there in the magnetic strip of the credit card is of utmost importance and this should be taken care of by the business. The CVV number is also something that needs to be protected from people as this is the most secret number that you can have on a card.
Tip #4: All credit card account numbers should be encrypted
You may feel the need of storing your credit card numbers for some written authorizations or for other reasons. In case your credit card numbers are stored in a paper, it should be locked in a secret place. For electronic storage, it should be encrypted by utilizing a robust encryption algorithm to prevent any kind of unauthorized access.
Therefore, if you’ve started off with a business of your own and you have to accept credit card payments, make sure you follow the above mentioned tips to ensure the safety of your customers. You may go through https://sumup.com/ for more information on this.
