Essential Security Features of Payment Gateway Services to Help You Sell, Manage and Grow Your Ecommerce Business

According to a study done by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development in the year 2015, the number of online shoppers will grow to 1.623 billion in 2018. 

With a growing percentage of people using the internet, the demand for online businesses is also rising. This makes payment gateways absolutely essential for online transactions as it acts as the intermediate between the merchant and the bank. But with the rapid growth of online transactions, threats of security have also increased. Security is the top most concern for customers. So, a payment gateway should ensure they use various standards, protocols and encryption mechanisms to provide a secure and seamless shopping experience to the customers. 

Data Encryption

Whenever a customer enters his payment details like credit and debit card information, the payment gateway passes this sensitive information securely between the customer and the merchant using the method of data encryption. When the payment details are entered, the payment gateway will encrypt this information using the payment gateway’s public key. Data encryption protects the customer’s information from unauthorized parties. In short, some of the best payment gateway services use this method to prevent the customer’s information from being stolen or misused.  

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)

SSL is used in payment gateways to securely transfer private data over public platforms using a certificate of authentication. SSL, which is a secure network protocol, makes use of two encrypting methods- asymmetric and symmetric encryption. In asymmetrical encryption, RSA (Rivest-Shamir-Adelman) algorithm and DSA (Digital Signature Algorithm) are used while in symmetrical encryption, AES (Advanced Encryption Standard), DES (Data Encryption Standard) and others are used. Most of the payment gateways make use of this protocol to securely transfer the data between the customers and the merchants. 

Secure Electronic Transaction (SET)

SET is another standard protocol which helps to communicate information between the customer, merchant and the payment gateway in a secure way using a digital signature. SET makes use of the customer’s digital signature and this prevents the merchant from seeing the customer’s payment information. When a payment gateway receives the payment information, it encrypts the data using its public key and verifies the primary account number. SET offers a high level of security and privacy to the customers and fulfils all the security requirements like data integrity, authentication and confidentiality by making use of public key certificates and digital signatures. 

Wrapping Up

Ecommerce payment security is very important, so if you own an ecommerce website, you need a secure payment gateway which can reduce the fraud and prevent the security breach of personal data. The best payment gateway services make use of the above mechanisms to protect the sensitive information of the customers from unauthorized parties.