Secure payment processing is an umbrella term that refers to a merchant’s obligation to keep your financial information safe when you make a purchase from them online. Most web sites that offer you the option of buying from them have stringent measures in place to protect your credit card information, as well as your identity. Without some of these measures in place to ensure that you are sending a secure payment, these transactions would be very dangerous and inefficient to deal with.
Luckily, there has been a surge of breakthroughs in recent times that should make even the most cautious of users feel safer when using their credit cards to make purchases online. These are much-needed breakthroughs in secure payment processing. According to eMarketer, in 2013 alone, about 73% of Internet users in the United States made at least one purchase during the calendar year. Clearly, almost everyone is using the Internet to shop these days.
Having such a large amount of users trying to make purchases online presents merchants with their own unique set of problems. Some of the biggest challenges these sellers face in the marketplace today are as follows:
- Customers not receiving the products they ordered
- Customers demanding refunds or charge-backs on products they did receive.
- Customers claiming they did not receive a product they ordered online
They may not sound like the most pressing issues in the world, but the costs of rectifying these issues and keeping users secure certainly add up. In 2014, the amount of money reportedly lost to fraud (combining the claims of merchants, users, and other buyers) was over 16 trillion dollars. For the fourth year in a row, the amount lost to fraud outstrips the amount gained by new marketplace growth. That represents a serious, serious problem.
Credit card payment systems have been some of the fastest-evolving technologies on the market. With so much money at stake, they absolutely need to be. Merchants are now using merchant payment gateways, as well as other systems designed to thoroughly verify and audit purchases made online in the hopes of separating the legitimate ones from the fraudulent ones. These systems are not only safer, but boost efficiency in the marketplace by eliminating some of the hiccups listed above that eCommerce sites find themselves dealing with.
With $1.2 million in sales every thirty seconds, it is a huge relief to know that these companies are taking secure payment processing very seriously. Even with the rampant growth this industry continues to face, it is a likely bet that security measures will continue to evolve until shopping online is just as safe as shopping down the street.