Data has become a commodity, with some thought leaders arguing that it is more valuable than oil. If data is more valuable than oil, then payment data is particularly valuable. It’s critical that your business takes steps to secure and protect it, not only to protect your revenue but also to remain in compliance with industry security standards.
Cybercriminials are at work daily finding new ways to obtain valuable data. And while it’s important to remain viligant and proactive, you’re not alone. Your payments partner will have a number of security protocols in place to help and enable your business for security success.
Merchants must trust that when they’re using a software’s payment solution, it’s secure. Security is the responsibility of everyone in the payments chain – the payments provider, the software, and the merchant. Each entity must work together and do their part in maintaining payment security.
Why is payment security important?
Following a data breach, 65% of data breach victims will lose trust in a company, and 80% of consumers would consider shopping with a competitor if their data was compromised in a data beach.
Once a data breach occurs, a company not only suffers the financial impacts of dealing with it, but the loss of trust and reputational damage can cause customer turnover too. Financially a single breach can cost a business tens of thousands of dollars. The ramifications for any sized business will be far reaching.
Beyond the financial, businesses have to think about payments security for:
- Establishing trust with your customers
- Maintaining your brand reputation
- Protecting the business revenue and your customers information
- Ensuring compliance with the relevant standards and requirements, including the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS)
Layering in security to your software payments
Payment security is truly a multi-layered approach. Software companies will have multiple responsibilites within payment security. You must ensure that the software stays up to date with security features while also educating your merchants on their responsibilities and providing them with the tools they need to protect payment data.
A few approaches to addressing security are:
- Complying with PCI DSS requirements
- Educate your merchants on the importance and requirements of PCI DSS
- Discuss the different payment security features with your partner (Tokenization, P2P encryption)
- Discuss the specific fraud prevention tools
With a full-service embedded payment provider, you can monetize your payment processing and have peace of mind in knowing that your business has secure payments infrastructure. Whether your business is looking to become a full payment facilitator (PayFac®) or process payments under the PayFac-as-a-service model, your payment provider should support you by providing the tools and features required to protect payment data for your software and your merchants.
Protect your payment data with Payrix
Payment data is one of the most valuable pieces of information that run through your business. Discussing a multi-layered approach with your partner is the first step in establishing the security protocols that will help protect your software business and your merchants.
While establishing the frameworks to collect, process and store payment data may seem complicated, working with a full-service payments partner such as Payrix will ensure you have the tools, support and infrastructure to protect your business and merchants.
