Dos and Don'ts of Payments Fraud Prevention

Owing to the continuously evolving digital technologies, digital payment transfers have become equally dynamic to encompass the ever-changing online market needs. Web-based business booms attract a consequential in-flow of online fraudsters, heightening the possibility of a fraud attack. Payment gateway integration in online payments should therefore feature fitting combative and preventative measures to minimize currency loss through fraud.

There’s a forest of fraud-combating strategies readily available to online payment transaction entities like providers of payment gateway for websites, online customers and merchants. In this post, we’ll look at some of the most vital dos and don’ts in the war against fraud. As a precursor, it’s important to note that fraud can occur on 3 distinct levels:

• Asset misappropriation schemes whereby employees unlawfully exploit the business’ resources by stealing cash through fictitious reimbursement claims or illegal acquisition of non-cash assets.

• Financial statement fraud through intentional omission or editing of payment records via hidden liabilities, inflated assets, fictional revenues and other shady charges.

• Corruption

Below are the most effective dos and don’ts for effective payment fraud prevention:

1. Secure Sensitive Payment Details

The most effective fraud prevention strategy in payment arrangements offered by reliable payment gateways like PayUmoney is careful storage of sensitive payment specifics. Bank account details, personal names, email addresses and other personal payment specifics should be concealed from the constantly prying eyes of fraudsters. So as to keep private payment data secure from potential fraud, follow these guidelines:

1. Store your cards (credit, debit, health insurance) in safe locations, preferably away from your wallet and liquid cash. This ensures that your personal details remain safe even when you lose other items.

2. Desist from checking financial statements online in public domains or crowded places as open (unsecured) Wi-Fi connections are easy channels for hackers to infringe into your financial data and perpetrate fraud. Besides, nearby individuals can easily glimpse your financial details.

3. Conduct online banking from the privacy of a private place like a room and safety of a secure personal wireless connection.

4. Regularly change pass-codes restricting access to your payment structures to make them harder for hackers to access. Also, make it a habit to use complex character and symbol combinations that are impossible to guess.

5. Avoid writing down personal PIN codes near or on your cards as this would offer fraudsters easy access to your sensitive payment data in case they glimpse the codes. Instead, memorize the access credentials.

6. Keep all you physical account details safely locked away and restrict access to your digital payment records using strong and unique passwords.

7. Be wary of sharing sensitive data like social security number and bank account details with unfamiliar personalities, especially over the phone or social platforms as this can quickly aggravate to fraud. Fraudsters are known for using sniffer software to steal financial account details from social media pages.

8. Shred all documents pertaining to past payment transactions as they can easily be used to disclose current financial account details, a precursor for fraud.

9. During card transactions, always maintain a sure eye-grip on your card and collect it as soon as the transaction is complete.

10. Never sign incomplete receipts, cheques or invoices as a fraudster can easily add some data and perpetrate fraud on your account. Moreover, you should always draw a line across all blank spaces above the total indicated payment sum.

11. Always retain your payment transaction receipts for later comparison and harmonization with the final statement.

12. Inform your card issuer organization of your residence’s physical address changes in case you relocate or plan to travel far away.

2. Maintain Amicable Work Relationships with Employees

A amicable work environment and harmonious  work ties with all your employees will definitely help you keep employees happy and build loyalty. These employees will not be prone to frauds. and will even help you sniff out fraudulent workers beforehand.

3. Setup and Maintain Updated Internal Controls

Integrating fitting payment security strategies like PCI-DSS certification compliance, Address Verification Systems (AVS) and extensive data encryption measures safeguard payment details from unauthorized access and interpretation thus guarantee your payments data uncompromised integrity during transmission, processing and storage.

4. Seek Fraud Experts

CPAs, CPAs certified in Financial Forensics (CFF) and Certified Fraud Examiners can accurately pin-point fraudulent payment policies and help you establish effective anti-fraud policies.

5. Enact fraud Detection and Reporting Strategies

Constantly monitor and update these strategies so they can enable you effectively identify fraud soft spots beforehand.

In addition to the strategies outlined above, you should always report instances and attempts of fraud like phishing to the rightful authority so they can institute swift combative measures. Hopefully this article has been an eye-opener on how to integrate payment gateway security strategies for unparalleled safety in payments.