Online shopping is preferred by many due to its variety and convenience. Research has shown many ways customers can improve their online shopping experience, including using credit cards. However, you must boost customer confidence in your online platform, as they will be less willing to share sensitive data if they don’t trust your business. Data breaches occur, and sometimes you can do little to stop them. But what if there are a few things you could do to keep your customer’s personal information secure? Here are the four best tips to store credit card information securely.
1. Know your obligation to keep information secure
You are contractually responsible for securing your customers’ credit card information if you’re using a merchant account to facilitate credit card transactions. Reading the tiny print of the signed document regarding merchant accounts will reveal that your company must be “PCI Compliant”, if you’re using payment card systems. Safeguarding account information is an important component of PCI Compliance, particularly how you store the data and the hardware and service providers you use. While you may use third-party software to handle payments, the product must safeguard your client’s credit card information.
2. Stick to approved software and equipment
Do you use a terminal for POS transactions or a swiper connected to a PC or smartphone for your payment processing software? Ensuring that all of your hardware and software have had their pci compliance checklist completed are crucial. Unfortunately, not all of the equipment for sale is safe to use. For example, many apps and card readers have security flaws and weaknesses, making them less than optimal. You may research and inquire about EMV card readers to avoid credit card fraud. These card readers are far more reliable than older magnetic swipe technology and can be useful for protecting your customers’ credit card information.
3. Use only secure forms to collect credit card details
If you’re considering accepting credit card payments on your ecommerce site, it’s crucial to prioritize security and compliance at every step of the process. One important strategy for protecting customer data is to only obtain credit card details through secure forms and store that data securely. This step helps prevent unauthorized access to sensitive information and reduces the risk of fraud or data breaches. Since the forms on many regular contact fields are not secured, it would be best to avoid using them for collecting sensitive information like credit card details. Using a secure ecommerce payment gateway to gather payment information would be best. This platform is safe and designed to encrypt everything sensitive without exceptions.
4. Be extra careful when using recurring billing
Before adopting recurring billing, you should assess if it is necessary for your business. Experts recommend employing a safe vault if the value of using recurring billing justifies the risks. A vault is a data storage mechanism that transfers credit data between your payment network and the vault via secured tokenization. It eliminates the numbers from your hands and significantly decreases the danger of breaches. Remember that if you must keep the information yourself, you will increase your self-assessment score and might need an examination and auditing on your system.
Applying these tips will help you enhance your customers’ online shopping experience, protect your brand reputation, and avoid fines and further financial damages.
