How to protect cardholder data

The pandemic has changed the face of almost everything in our lives from how we work and play to how we shop and spend. And when COVID caused Main Street to collectively flip their store signs to ‘closed,’ the world hit the Internet like a tidal wave of digital commerce.

Many small businesses have made the pivot to ecommerce. Even as CDC restrictions have lifted, a number of small businesses have embraced the increase in online payments, some even going as far as eliminating cash payments altogether. This increase in digital payment methods has allowed many businesses to navigate through the challenges of COVID and beyond.

Challenges In Digital Payments

While this increase in online payments has been good for most business owners, the Federal Trade Commission reports Americans lost $5.8 billion to fraud in 2021. To put that in perspective, that number was $3.4 billion in 2020, showing a 70% increase in just one year.

So this huge increase in electronic payment methods has also enticed an unsavory amount of hackers, thieves, and scammers. This has, of course, created a heightened awareness of fraud from cardholders who are now looking for more protection when it comes to making online or digital payments. In fact, 80% of consumers considered “security” the most critical factor for online shopping in 2021 according to BusinessWire.

Another challenge to consider is that when fraud does occur, the business is liable in most cases. In fact, according to the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) the average loss for a small business that fell victim to fraud was an average of $150,000.

Generally, the responsibility of fraud detection and prevention falls on the business and unfortunately, small businesses are targeted more frequently than larger companies. If there is fraud, you could be left holding the bag on the losses. No business owner wants to hear that.

So what is a small business owner to do, knowing these bands of digital rogues are out there trying to steal from them and their customers? Thankfully, there are a number of steps business owners can take to protect their transaction data and their bottom line. Nationwide Insurance found that businesses that put safeguards in place experienced 54% less in losses than those without.

As a trusted business partner with expertise in POS systems and credit card processing, Elavon offers a variety of safe and secure transaction solutions that can help keep you and your customer payment data safer from anyone trying to cheat others out of their hard-earned money. And these solutions are PCI compliant, ensuring better security, reduced costs and lower fraud losses.

Solutions To Protect Digital Payments

1. Safe-T Solo - Protection offers peace of mind. With this option, you can protect your business with up to $250,000 in breach assistance to cover card network fines, fees or assessments in the event your business is victimized by a data breach event.

2. Safe-T Link - Immediately secure your payments environment while enabling your customers to pay with their preferred payment method. This option protects your investment by integrating future payment technology that works with and enhances your current point of sale system.

3. Safe-T Link with P2PE Protect - More than just a pretty acronym, this solution delivers point-to-point encryption (P2PE) and tokenization to isolate sensitive cardholder data from point of sale (POS) or property management systems (PMS). Triple security layer effectively removes credit card data from your network. And you can’t steal what isn’t there.

The reputation of your business is important to you and your customers. Contact Elavon today and find out more on protecting your business and customers.