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If you’re an e-commerce business owner, securing the payments of your customers should be a top priority for your website. A seamless customer buying experience can be interrupted by an inefficient payment system that could ultimately result in stolen customer information. This makes the payment technology you choose to use is especially important in protecting your customers and company.
The pandemic forced us all into lockdown and shifted many of our jobs to remote work environments. It also incited a significant increase in e-commerce spending. This change in consumer buying patterns puts more responsibility on business owners to ensure customers a safe and secure mobile payment experience.
Below we will talk about the increase in e-commerce buying and its connection to mobile payment security, some basic information to always have on hand about mobile payment security, the responsibility of e-commerce business owners to provide secure mobile payment systems, and how to proceed in establishing a secure mobile payment process for your site.
What is Mobile Payment Security?
First, let’s recap what is considered a mobile payment. A mobile payment is a point-of-sale transaction or payment for a product or service made or received with a mobile device like a cell phone, tablet, or smartwatch. Business owners can secure mobile payments by building their online stores with website platforms that specialize in e-commerce business practices.
Implementing a successful security strategy for your mobile payments starts with choosing the website platform that aligns with your e-commerce goals and experience with building an e-commerce business. You’ll also want to build a diverse team to help run your business online that includes at least one person knowledgeable in website development and payment security processes.
Mobile payment security is important because consumers like the convenience of storing their payment information online and streamlining their purchases, but are hesitant to do so because of security threats.
How is Payment Information Stored Online?
To ensure your customers’ payment information is being fully protected on your site, you’ll want to thoroughly understand how payment information is stored online and with this knowledge, be empathetic to why customers are so insecure about mobile payments.
Business owners usually use a cloud or online storage system with encryption to store customer credit card data. Nightmare stories of hackers easily infiltrating these company payment storage systems make consumers wary about how safe it is to store their credit card information on your site. With this sentiment at the forefront of your strategy, you can craft a secure system for customers to process mobile payments that cater to their distrust and fears.
It will be up to business owners to make protecting customer information a top priority when creating their e-commerce sites.
Why are More People Buying Online?
There’s been a recent boom in e-commerce spending because of the Covid-19 pandemic. People are shopping online a lot more due to travel bans, lockdowns, retail closures, and work from home schedules. The pandemic has also caused many businesses to suddenly shift all of their business operations to an online platform, experienced or not.
Consumers find themselves enjoying the convenience of shopping online as they balance their busier-than-ever schedules consisting of work, school, and personal passions. Keeping current on e-commerce technology will help your business keep ahead of this uptick in online buying and customer craving for a convenient online shopping experience.
As more people transition to online shopping, it will be up to business owners to ensure their e-commerce site is prepared with a smooth buying experience and secure mobile payment system.
Why is Mobile Payment Security More Important Than Ever?
Mobile payment security is more important than ever for e-commerce business owners because e-commerce trends like these reveal that more and more customers will participate in buying online:
- Consumers are still wary of buying in-store due to the pandemic, so buying online is becoming a permanent activity and essential items are now purchased just as often as nonessential items.
- Mobile phone usage has skyrocketed during the pandemic. Social media and e-commerce buying are top activities performed by mobile phone users.
- 40.6% of consumers report using mobile payment services more frequently.
As retail closures persist due to the pandemic, consumers are forced to find businesses online to get the things they need and want. The increased importance of mobile payment security for e-commerce business owners is attributed to the continued advancement of technology and rooted in how customers want to trust e-commerce sites enough to save their payment information to make purchasing online faster for them.
If you haven’t made the transition to a partial or full e-commerce business model, you will soon. As a business owner, you’ll be expected to ensure customers are comfortable at least submitting their personal information to your site. You can stand out in the crowded e-commerce space by providing unmatched mobile payment security for your online customers.
Steps to Establishing Mobile Payment Security
Securing payments for your clients and customers on your site is especially important for e-commerce business owners who only recently transitioned all of their business operations online. New e-commerce businesses tend to not take mobile payment security as seriously as they should because they don’t feel their business is big enough to attract hackers. But research suggests that these new businesses are more susceptible to a data breach because they don’t have the proper protection in place for customer and company data.
Here are the first steps to establishing mobile payment security on your site:
- Choose your mobile payment type (mobile payment device that involves swiping or inputting a credit card number, mobile wallet, or digital wallet)
- Choose an effective e-commerce website building software that closely matches your business model and customer needs
- Thoroughly study the ways you can make mobile payments more secure on your site based on your business type and industry
Taking the right steps at the beginning of your e-commerce site construction will save you money, time, and customers in the long run.
Don’t wait for a data breach to take your customers’ privacy and protection seriously. The current e-commerce landscape is driving consumers online, so make sure your business is prepared with an efficient e-commerce website and secure mobile payment strategy that caters to your customers.