How to prevent payment fraud

How to prevent payment fraud

Few phrases are more terrifying for small business owners than “data breach”. Even with good point of sale and payment processing systems in place, data security should be a team sport for every small business. You need to ensure that everyone who works in your organization is also working on keeping your business data and transactions safe.

What is data security?

Data security is protecting digital data from unwanted actions of unauthorized users and destructive forces such as a cyber attack or a data breach.

Why is data security important to a business?

Data security functions to prevent data breaches, reduce risk of data exposure and for regulatory compliance purposes. Within any organization, data security's role is to ensure the ongoing safe and secure use of private data while minimizing exposure risk.¹

What Is payment fraud?

Payment fraud happens when someone with ill intent steals another person's private payment information and uses it for false or illegal transactions. 

How to keep payments secure

Elavon has a proven track record when it comes to helping businesses secure their payments, and we have outlined four scenarios that should raise red flags for a business. Protect your profit and reputation by watching out for these types of situations.

Small transactions, big problems

Once credit card data is stolen, fraudsters know the clock is ticking so they make as many purchases as possible in a short amount of time. Look out for orders with a lower than usual dollar amount or an exceedingly high dollar amount. Fraudsters will often try to authorize small transactions to make sure they have valid card data before attempting a larger purchase. Consider setting a threshold amount on your payments device. A Threshold Amount is the maximum dollar amount allowed per transaction. If a transaction exceeds your defined limit, the transaction is declined.

Multiple orders could be ‘out of order’

Are you getting several orders placed on the same credit card in an uncharacteristically short amount of time? That is another red flag. While a ‘velocity limit’ sounds like something from a Michael Bay movie, it’s actually a helpful way to stop fraudulent transactions. Velocity limits set a cap on the number of transactions that can be authorized in a certain period of time. By setting velocity limits on your payments device, you limit the transaction total amount per hour, day or week from the same credit card..

Avoid a mess, check the address

Use an Address Verification System (AVS) that automatically checks a cardholder’s billing address against the card issuer’s database as a simple means for potential fraud detection.

Card not present?

Keep a close eye on multiple charge attempts against a single card number when the card is not present. Multiple charge attempts could be a sign that someone is attempting to use stolen card data without the physical card. Requiring entry of a CVV code located on the physical card is a smart and easy way to detour potentially fraudulent card not present transactions.

How to keep data secure in a business

In addition to all these tips and recommendations that can arm you against would-be fraudsters, you can also get in touch with Elavon anytime to find out more about credit card data protection and PCI DSS compliance validation. Our dedicated security teams are ready to help you protect your business by identifying security threats before they become major problems. Our available state-of-the-art security solutions protect data in transit and at rest with protective measures like tokenization and encryption. 

Call us today to find out more about educating your team on fraud, hacking, scams and more.