Your company owes it to your customers to do what’s right. That means you must do what you can to manage mobile payment risks. While there is always some risk involved in with data transmission, things like tokenization and encryption can significantly reduce this risk. But what else should your company be concerned about?
Survey Highlights Vulnerabilities
A 2015 survey of experts in cybersecurity shows serious perception problems related to EMV mobile payments, in-store mobile payments and related issues. Of 900+ cybersecurity professionals who were surveyed, 47 percent said there are security issues with mobile payments and a perceived risk.
The study from ISACA does not indicate any slowdown in the adoption or popularity of mobile payments for consumers, however. Consumers are accustomed to balancing privacy, security and convenience in today’s digital world. That means merchants and those who serve them must do all they can to earn and maintain the trust of consumers by securing mobile payments using the best available technology.
Control What You Can
Many of the biggest threats to mobile payments involve things merchants can’t control, including consumer data transmission using public wifi, stolen or lost devices, phishing and similar attacks, weak passwords and user error.
Tokenization and host card emulation are among the ways that merchants can play a role in securing mobile payments. With tokenization, a non-exploitable string of numbers – or a token – is substituted for a sensitive piece of data. Since the token has no meaning outside its context, there is no value if it’s stolen in transmission.
With host card emulation or HCE, account details are stored securely in the cloud rather than on a device. This is the system that Android Pay and some other mobile payment services use for their mobile payment transactions.
When you choose a feature-rich robust payment gateway with mobile payment security built in, you’re well on your way to meeting your obligations and your customers’ needs. The UniPay payment gateway from United Thinkers is designed in the mobile age, so mobile payment security isn’t an afterthought. Contact us to learn more about the UniPay gateway and whether it could be right for you.