Editor’s Note: In order to provide more detail on this topic, the information will be provided in a series of two posts. There are several unique benefits that come with an integrated payment processing solution – one baked into a merchant’s business management software. In this brief, two-blog commentary, we’ll discuss some of those benefits, the first being focused on security.
Most merchants are in business because of their passion about a product or service, and because they are interested in making money. To succeed, business owners must be prepared for the many obstacles they can face. When it comes to electronic payment acceptance, security is one of the challenges that is best faced upfront to avoid even greater obstacles down the road. And it’s a feature that integrated payments providers take seriously.
Payment security boils down to the protection of personal data. Credit card numbers, bank account information and personal identities are some of elements that can become compromised in a data breach. That data is highly sensitive, and consumers are aware of existing threats. Because of this, merchants — especially those in ecommerce and specialty markets — must take measures to ensure data isn’t vulnerable and customers are put at ease.
While any business that accepts electronic payments is a possible target, those in industries gathering a large amount of personally identifiable information require a hardened security environment, special merchants require special attention. Knowing that merchants in certain industries need extra data security — and being able to provide it through a proven payment gateway — allows for a payments solution company like OpenEdge to provide the needed security solutions. And through integration, the opportunities for that secure data to be compromised are lessened, as virtually all payments data is utilized within one secure software platform.
How is this type of security ensured? Tokenization is one tool and it ensures that sensitive data elements are substituted with non-sensitive equivalents that have no exploitable value. Tokenization is an important part of an overall security solution that merchants should have in place to minimize or mitigate potential breach threats.
Missteps made during the assessment or set up of merchant processing accounts can lead to costly errors down the road. Put simply, data breaches can cause reputation damage that can put a merchant out of business. With this in mind, it’s important to partner with trusted and proven industry experts; experts not only in providing the needed payment processing tools, but experts that understand your business and uniqueness of your security needs.
When you consider the above, it’s tough to beat the partnership between your business management software and a secure payments provider like OpenEdge providing a single, proven, efficient solution to your payment processing needs.
COMING NEXT: We explore other inherent benefits of an integrated payments solution
