Most businesses are now accepting mobile payments. Mobile payments are convenient, easy to use accessible and most people prefer them. However, with the increase in popularity of mobile payments, so does the need to ensure your payment platform is secure.
While mobile payments have enforced advanced security features, it’s still essential to take precautions to ensure your financial information is not compromised. Here is how you can secure your mobile payments.
Use genuine mobile payment platforms
If you are downloading a payment app on your mobile, ensure you use a trusted one such as PayPal. Ensure the app you are downloading is also the latest one with updated security features. Ensure that before you download any payment app on your smartphone, it’s from a vendor or developer you are sure of. Go to the website and check how many people or how many times the app has been downloaded. If many people are using it, then they are trustworthy.
Remember to check reviews on the play store to see what people are saying about the app, user experience, and the payment method’s security. When downloading apps, they usually ask for permission to access your phone’s other apps, like messages or photos, so ensure what they need to access is appropriate for their app.
Use a strong password
Ensure your phone is locked with a strong password. In case it’s stolen, no one can easily access your personal and financial information. Or even make unauthorized purchases using your mobile payment app.
You can also use two-factor authentication. Usually known as 2FA, it uses two steps of identification for authentication. It can be a combination of a password with a fingerprint scan or facial recognition.
Device-specific cryptograms
This is a unique technology that, when used, ensures that any transactions only originate from the account holder’s device. This protects against hackers in that even if they obtain away through to the mobile payment platform. They can’t use it on any other device.
Tokenisation
Tokenisation is a security system used by mobile applications to protect customer data from hackers and cyber fraud. For example, if you are a business and your merchant account is attacked by hackers, they cannot access customer information, only the token data, which isn’t much.
Credit card tokenization is important for several reasons, primarily focusing on enhancing security, compliance, and user trust. Some of the key ways of highlighting its importance are to look at how it can enhance security and, therefore, reduce the risk of fraud. Many businesses prefer to use credit card tokenization because it ensures that businesses comply with security standards. Mobile payment providers must comply with stringent security standards such as PCI DSS. Tokenization helps in meeting these requirements by minimizing the storage and transmission of sensitive card data, making compliance easier and more robust
Such advancements in security make mobile payment appeal to both the merchant and the customer, as both parties are assured of protection from fraud and cybercrime.
Always check your statements
Mobile payments are easy and convenient to use, and most of the time, people don’t go through their statements. Ensure you check your statements often and if you notice anything out of the ordinary, report it immediately. Hackers usually run trial charges of smaller amounts before they can clean out your account, so beware.
Mobile payments have made online and in-store shopping easy, where customers can pay for goods and services with their smartphones. However, as much as the technology is convenient, you need to be wary of fraudsters and hackers. Even though mobile apps have their security systems, you still need to take extra precautions to secure your mobile payment platform.
