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Make sure your electronic payment system is secure

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Pet owner with her dog making a credit card payment on a mobile point-of-sale device

Understand four important payment system requirements that help you minimize data theft or fraud.

Securing your practice’s payment systems is more important than ever

A study by Federal Reserve Financial Services found that 30% of Americans used debit cards for payments and 32% paid by credit card. Only 16% said they preferred using cash.1 While electronic transactions mean lower risk from the loss or physical theft of money, it increases the chances of personal information being hacked and used fraudulently. So, the importance of security in taking payments from your clients is paramount.

 

Credit card companies and banks have kept in step with the shift towards electronic payments. They’ve created a number of security requirements for vendors and businesses that take credit, debit or online payments to comply with in order to ensure their customer’s data is protected. Here are some of these requirements.

 

 

EMV Compliance

Developed by Europay, MasterCard and Visa, EMV – also known as a chip, or smart, card – has higher security features than the more traditional magnetic stripe credit and debit cards. Upgrading your EFTPOS machines to accept these types of payments means you’re offering an added level of security for your clients during and after the transaction.

 

 

PCI DSS Compliance

PCI DSS stands for Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard. This is a set of security standards developed to ensure that companies that accept, process, store or transmit credit card information maintain a secure environment. It’s a universal standard for how to handle, use and store credit card information. There are twelve steps you must take to become PCI DSS compliant.

 

 

Tokenization

Tokenization provides a way for you to not have to collect or store sensitive data, such as credit card details. Instead, it takes the sensitive data and replaces it with a randomly generated string of characters. An authorized party can then match this to the original data. Tokenization also helps you become PCI DSS compliant, as you’re no longer storing the sensitive credit card information on your system.

 

 

SSL (Secure Socket Layer)

If you take online payments or collect personal or sensitive information through your website, it’s important to activate SSL. It creates an encrypted link between a web server and a browser and ensures the information between the two remains private.

 

To help facilitate payment security compliance at your practice, it’s important to pick the right payment processing system. Some, like those offered by approved Covetrus vendors, are already EMV and PCI DSS certified. This makes two fewer criteria for you to worry about. And, Covetrus practice management software also supports tokenization, allowing you to ‘store’ credit card information securely. To find out more about how to choose a vendor that can help you meet payment security requirements, contact us.

Quotation Mark

While electronic transactions mean lower risk from the loss or physical theft of money, it increases the chances of personal information being hacked and used fraudulently. So, the importance of security in taking payments from your clients is paramount.

Quotation Mark

1 2024 Findings from the Diary of Consumer Payment Choice. Federal Reserve Financial Services. 2024. https://www.frbservices.org/binaries/content/assets/crsocms/news/research/2024-diary-of-consumer-payment-choice.pdf