Online Shopping & Payments

We all enjoy the convenience of paying for our things online, who doesn't? It's quick, effective and efficient, all one needs to do is enter their card details and voil?! However, it's not just the consumer who enjoys this easy luxury, businesses too would much rather have a steady cash flow where, money is coming in instantly rather than having wait to days or even weeks for cheques or bank transfers to clear and this couldn't be more vital for the survival for businesses today as credit is becoming increasingly limited. There are a number of things a company must take into consideration before accepting card payments online. These are shown below.

Visa Merchant Agent

By 31 December 2012, if merchants and mercahant agents want to continue processing Visa credit and debit cards, then they must meet Visa's adequate levels of data security and register their services online. Visa

have published a list of certified merchants and merchant agents that want to continue to process Visa card payments online. The purpose of this list is to improve merchant and service provider data risk management.

PCI DSS

Online security and data protection is key when buying/selling online. PCI DSS is a set of comprehensive requirements for enchancing payment account data security. These standards were developed by the founding payment brands of the PCI security standards council to help improve card security.

Merchant ID

Merchant accounts are accounts which are set up for a merchant where you will be assigned a merchant ID. Using this merchant ID, your business will be identified by the banks so that you are able to accept card payments online. Typically, the banks include charges for set up, monthly or annual fees and a monthly rental price for the rental of a terminal. If you want to set up a web site to accept card payments you will find that the acquiring banks will not accept any information coming from you via the Internet. The banks will only accept information from a web site which has been processed by an approved Payment Service Provider (PSP).

3D Secure

3D secure stands for 3 domain secure and there are three parties involved in this process which are:

• The vendor

• The acquiring bank

• Visa & Mastercard

Shopping on the internet is now such a convenient experience for everyone especially Visa cardholders and merchants. As online shopping continues to grow, there are more concerns about the potential for fraudulent use of cards online. 3D secure was developed by Visa to improve the security of payments on the internet. It allows the authentication of cardholders by their issuers. The benefits of having 3d secure as a cardholder when buying online is that it gives the cutomer an increased confidence of buying online and their details being secure, there is no special software needed to use this and finally it is easy to use. Benefits for the merchant is that it can dramatically reduce the risk of fraudulent transactions and there could be a decrease in disputed transactions.

SSL Certification

An SSL certificate is a protocol and in order to use the SSL protocol, companies need an SSL certificate. An SSL certificate is a small file that binds a cryptogrpahic key to your companies details. When an SSL certificate is installed on your server, it activates a padlock that you may have seen previously when buying online to allow a secure connection from the server to the browser.

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