Online retailers and businesses with payment options need to ensure that they use secure, trusted payment systems. Without them, customer details are at risk, and tech savvy website visitors may choose not to purchase altogether.
Ensure your website is payment ready
Firstly it is important to ensure that your website uses secure encryption to protect against hackers. Setting up SSL and HTTPS for your website is good practice to ensure that details entered by visitors are securely encrypted. To setup, you will need to obtain a security certificate from your web host provider, or if you are hosting internally, from a trusted certification company.
Choose a payment system
Next, you will need to decide how you want your customers to pay. There are a number of generally acceptable online payment methods, which one you choose will depend on your target customer base and the goods/services you are selling.
Debit/Credit card
Using a debit/credit card payment system is commonplace for online resellers. It provides a familiar and simple way for customers to make payments. Card details are checked and verified by either the card issuer or a third party such as WorldPay or SecureTrading. There are a number of organisations that can help you setup card payment capability on your website, including RBSWorldPay.com, SecureTrading.com, SagePay.co.uk amongst many more.
Paypal/electronic payment
Companies such as Paypal provide an electronic payment method for people online. Both the customer and organisation must have a Paypal account setup in order to use this method, and as such, this requires the customer to perform another action before being able to purchase.
Paypal accounts are topped up with credit by the user before purchasing - this can be done in one step, once a bank account/debit card has been correctly setup and verified with Paypal, simplifying the customers purchase. When a purchase is made, the funds are transferred electronically to the organisations Paypal account, where they can then be transferred to an external bank account. Organisations such as Paypal offer buyer and seller protection – this feature is provided to verified users to allow instant payments, as described above, and to give reassurance to the buyer that a company is legitimate.
Escrow
Escrow is another electronic form of payment, used generally for high value purchases. Funds are transferred by the buyer to an Escrow service provider such as escrow.com. The service provider confirms to the seller that the funds have been received, and ships the goods. Once the buyer has received the goods, the funds are released to the seller. If using escrow, always use a trusted escrow service provider.
Other payment methods are available such as SMS billing and dialler billing (i.e. billing to your phone line) However, these are less commonplace and provide less control
Using any of these payment systems will incur various costs, but can give you an advantage over your competitors. Consumers now assume organisations will provide online shopping services, and choose to make purchases online rather than visit stores. Depending on the nature of your business and your position amongst the competition, providing online payment could prove invaluable.
Further information
For further information on secure payment systems visit: www.getsafeonline.org
