Tuesday, 8 January 2019

Important Security Measures for Online Businesses

Cyber-security is indispensable due to the increasing data breaches payment gateways are facing. Taking necessary security measures is critical to protect both consumers and the business.

Data breaches not only pose security risks, but hold the potential to adversely impact your business due to loss in customer trust.

An online payment gateway is among the vital components of an e-commerce store, because of which no stone should be left unturned in the cyber-security department.

As a merchant, the responsibility to have the purchasing process under control so that risk is reduced at every step of a checkout lies on you. Data thieves’ are always one step ahead with regard to how new technologies function. This makes it imperative to strictly minimize the vulnerable points of your online payment gateway.

Even though technology is developing rapidly, keeping up with these changes to completely prevent fraud is a herculean task.  Thankfully, there are warning signs you can look for to minimize the occurrence of such activities.

Following are some ways to safeguard your business from cybercrime:

1. Monitor orders before shipping

This includes international orders as well. While this could be a time consuming process in the long run it will save you money.  Getting a signature upon delivery is another good way of checking that the order has been delivered to the right person. Pay particular attention to late night and early morning orders, as it’s the time period fraudsters often make purchases.

2. Avoid Using HTTP

Make sure the merchant login page is not in HTTP. If you use a web page that is in HTTP you make your page vulnerable to many kinds of security threats. Redirecting users to fake login pages, changing important details on the page in the middle of a transaction and submitting data are possible in HTTP. To avoid such dangers, most login pages are in HTTPS format which is very secure.

3. Using HSTS

HSTS stands for HTTP Strict Transport Security. It can be understood as a type of a header that directs a browser to HTTPS whenever a particular site is opened.

Once the user visits the site that has been preloaded with HSTS, he is unable to get access to the site using HTTP ever again in the future.

4. Using Secure Cookies

Cookies might sound harmless, but they shouldn’t be taken for their face value. Cookies must be marked as secure so that the browser can transfer cookies when the request is in HTTPS. Secure cookies will prevent the browser from transmitting data whenever the site is in HTTP. By doing so, even if a hacker has access to your cookies he will be unable to control sensitive data and make any problematic changes.

The best online payment gateways in India ensure they have strong safety measures in place to protect your business from the rising cyber-crime, so make sure you choose one that offers the highest degree of security.

Life-cycle of Digital Payments for a Card Payment Gateway

The concept of digital payments was born out of convenience and control for consumers. It is only natural for this concept to be consumer-centric as in all markets the consumer is king. Today we will take a closer look at the complex process of digital transactions in a card payment gateway that make life so easy for us. The gateway is a piece of technology through which several merchants and platforms are able to connect from the website to their customers’ mobile devices.

Verification

Once on the other side of the payment gateway, vendors ensure the transaction and consumer behind the transaction is legitimate. Vendors verify details by matching shipping and card addresses, CVV code, blacklisting for credit card default, and IP address. These checkpoints are essential to protect merchants from unnecessary and avoidable costs.

Involvement of Banks

After all the verifications are made, payment requests are routed to the customer’s issuing bank and the merchant’s acquiring bank. Funds are exchanged between these two parties. The card payment gateway sends the initial transaction request to the merchant’s acquiring bank, in response to which this bank requests a payment from the customer’s bank via the payment gateway. When communicating with the customer’s bank, payment gateways run a series of fraud prevention measures. The message of a declined transaction is relayed by the gateway to the customer through the merchant and all in a matter of microseconds.

Settlements

If things have flowed smoothly till this point, the merchant sends a ‘settlement request’ which is a way of confirming their action of charging the customer’s issuing card.

Bill Splitting

Some payment gateways even have an option to divide funds between sellers and facilitating platforms and maintain individual ledgers to do so.

All digital payments through payment gateways follow this cycle. A card payment gateway that stands apart is one that is reliable, secure, scalable, and offer tech-support. Easebuzz is one such platform that enables quick and easy payments end-to-end for upcoming businesses across India.