From consumers to businesses, the world is moving to online payment systems. Despite the fact that the technology has improved over the past decades, concerns about security remain. For every new electronic payment option, criminals will try to hack it and obtain users’ personal data. For small business owners, the challenges of security are doubled – you have to ensure that both your customers’ and your company’s data remains safe.
The advent of paperless invoicing and online payment acceptance has opened up a whole new world for small business owners. In the past, time-consuming hurdles such as mail delivery of checks, bank clearance and delinquent accounts limited the speed of transactions. While those problems have yet to be entirely eliminated, the speed with which online and electronic transactions can be completed has revolutionized the time frame for getting paid.
Plenty of vendors offer ways for small businesses to collect payments, but not all are created the same – and it can be difficult to know who to trust in the ever-growing field of companies that are clamoring to provide those services. That’s why it’s essential to find out how you can accept payments with the highest level of security.
The smartest choice is often opting to work with a trusted, renowned company with a long track record. One online payment acceptance and invoicing option, AcceptPay, is offered by American Express OPEN and is equipped with industry-leading payment security.
By offering your customers features like secure log-ins, data encryption and secure information transfer and storage, you’ll instantly make them feel more comfortable. And as more people are becoming savvy about what to look for in a secure site, you need to offer processing that is performed by SSL (Secured Socket Layer) – a common tip-off for this is seeing “https” in their browser’s address bar.
Doing a bit of extra homework that goes beyond those checklist items is a good idea, as well. Above all, make sure whatever system you choose is compliant with Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCI DSS), as AcceptPay is. An added layer of protection, in the form of Intrusion Detection Service (IDS) is among the latest defenses against stealthy, malicious and suspicious network activity and it alerts you to any attempt to access your network by unauthorized third parties.
The benefits of getting paid faster through online transactions only go as far as the level of security your business can offer its customers. If your system is insecure and your customers (or your own accounts) fall prey, your gains are instantly null. To protect the future of your small business, you have to start by protecting your customers with a secure online payment system.
