Three Steps to Securing Payment Transactions

These days it’s virtually impossible to run a business without accepting card payments. People use debit and credit cards to pay for everything, which means their financial data is subject to security breaches. As a software provider that offers in-software payments, you have a responsibility to provide consumers with secure payment processing. You can do so by focusing on these three steps:  PCI compliance, point-to-point encryption and tokenization.

1. PCI Compliance

PCI DSS stands for Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard. These standards are set by the PCI Security Standards Council (PCI SSC) to maximize the security of data collected through payment card transactions. Any business that accepts, processes, transmits and stores card information must use a PCI compliant provider. PCI compliance is required of every business that accepts and processes card payments.

2. Point-to-Point Encryption (P2PE)

With point-to-point encryption, card data is encoded at the point the data is swiped or entered to protect the sensitive information in transit. The encryption that occurs at the point of entry protects the cardholder data. The moment each card is swiped, the data is put into code and remains encoded until it reaches the provider’s secure decryption location. If the information is stolen, criminals won’t be able to read the masked data thus ensuring secure payment processing.

3. Tokenization

Tokenization replaces card numbers with randomly generated token, or symbolic, numbers to ensure the true data remains secure. The token is used to route the transaction information to a token vault where the real data is securely stored.

With the 2017 Breach Level Index (BLI) showing that the the number of data records compromised in publicly disclosed data breaches surpassed 2.5 billion, up 88% from 2016, payment security must remain at the forefront of our business practices.