How Do Payment Gateway Services Maintain Security during Transactions?

If you are an online trader wishing to grow your business by selling products through an electronic medium, then you must be aware of the significance of payment gateway services. It is a fact that these days, a bulk of the customers not only in UAE but throughout the world have shifted from traditional shopping experience where they had to visit the brick and mortar stores personally and physically select commodities.
 
Nowadays, busy lifestyle and unnecessarily clogged city traffic made many clients resort to online shopping. However, you must also remember along with the increase in online customers, there is also a substantial multiplication of cybercriminals and hackers. They are also look to misuse customers’ financial data. It is where payment gateway services come in. Their most crucial task is providing security during transactions. Continue reading to understand how these payment gateways accomplish this task.
 
Point-to-point encryption
Point-to-point encryption (P2PE) is a highly advanced approach to safeguarding customers’ transactions. The moment consumers furnish their debit or credit card details to the online store for the purchasing of products, they become susceptible to the hacking of data. However, if the payment gateway uses P2PE, hackers are unable to intercept these financial details. In this case, it is directly passed on from the payment gateway to the payment processor without any chances of leakage of information. Customers can shop without any worries when you incorporate P2PE enabled payment gateway at your site.
 
TLS Certification
TLS or Transport Layer Security Certification is a cryptographic protocol which functions in offering enhanced financial security over a computer network. Presence of TLS Certification ensures that all data transmitted through the site are safe. Any third party cannot see it. An easy way of finding out whether any website has a TLS Certification is checking the URL. If it contains ‘https://’, it suggests the portal is safe for shopping.
 
Tokenisation
Many payment gateway services now use tokenisation method to keep hackers at bay. Here they substitute the actual credit card number of customers with randomly selected characters or string of data for onetime purchase. The hackers cannot trace this ‘token’ to the cardholder without the decryption key. Tokenisation is a very safe feature for the trader because in this case, clients’ sensitive financial data never gets saved on their portal. So, there is nothing to steal for hackers. The secured payment gateways perform all the necessary transactional services for the merchant. Implementation of this feature by the payment gateways can prevent any data breach or loss of revenue for the merchant.
 
PCI DSS Compliance
Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) came into effect in 2006, offering financial guidance to merchants regarding payment solutions. Some of the requirements for obtaining PCI SCC Certification include- using a firewall on the network, working on only validated payment software and proper training of staff about security and protecting cardholders’ data. If a payment gateway remains PCI SCC compliant, then it is understood they provide top-level protection to customers.
 
These were a few security measures employed by premium payment gateway services. If you are planning of enrolling them at your site, conduct thorough research and select the best one based on the above criteria.