Take Care of These 4 Security Risks to Protect Your Business from Fraud!

As a business owner, it is likely that you accept credit card payments from customers on a daily basis. However, if you’re not careful, this process could lead to security risks that ultimately result in fraud. To protect customer information as well as your revenues, and to avoid dealing with fines, it is essential that you keep in mind the following when accepting any sort of credit card payment.

1. Identification of fake cards

While catering to a long line of customers on a busy day, it is easy to overlook signs that indicate that the credit card being used is fake. Criminals often purchase credit card numbers on the black market and then create fake cards.

One of the telltale signs of a fake credit card is a damaged or scratched magnetic strip. If criminals are unable to encode stolen information on a card’s magnetic strip, they may scratch it so that the cashier is forced to enter details manually. If you suspect that the customer is using a fake card, request proper identification before completing the transaction.

Moreover, it is important for the cashier to be familiar with the appearance of various cards in order to differentiate between those that are fake and real. Finally, make sure to inspect the numbers printed on the card. Oftentimes, criminals use poor equipment to embed stolen numbers due to which they turn out to be all irregular and crooked.

 2. Matching names on credit card with ID

The general rule is to check for a signature on the back of the card, and in its absence, request for identification. Do not accept payment from a customer who cannot produce a photo ID, or whose name does not match the one given on the card. This step alone may help you protect your business from fraud.

3. Avoiding storing customer data for later use

Sometimes, the staff at retail stores write down a customer’s credit card details in order to charge it later. Unfortunately, this could be a violation of the Terms of Service agreement that the business has with its merchant account provider.

A customer’s credit card details, if compromised, could result in both fraud liability and stiff fines. This is why credit card data is stored only in very secure and specific ways. While making a payment a data lockout occurs. This prevents the employee from fully pulling back the card details. The staff can only see the last four digits to verify customer information. In other words, a card processing company puts in place stringent measures to ensure that a consumer’s information is never compromised.

So, under no circumstances must a business allow a customer’s credit card details to be stored in such a manner that it can be accessed and stolen by unscrupulous employees.

4. Processing returns properly

Let’s say an item was purchased from your store using a credit card and now the buyer wants to return it for cash. In such cases, your business may be at risk of fraud if the goods were originally purchased using a stolen or fake credit card.

To avoid being tricked this way, put in place measures to ensure returns are processed properly. It’s always better to process cash refunds only for those items that were originally purchased using cash.

To protect your business from security risks related to credit card payments, it is imperative to train staff properly and handle sensitive customer information with care.

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