How Do Secure Payment Solutions Help Merchants?

With the vast expansion of Internet use, the sale of goods and services online has also increased rapidly. Despite its many advantages like convenience and choice, the online environment is susceptible to both human error and fraud. For accurate record keeping and to maintain secure payments, merchants can sign up for secure payment systems which help them to manage purchases, and to monitor delivery and follow-up transactions.

Online transactions are increasing rapidly
As Internet usage has exploded worldwide, so has the number of online transactions. Worldwide, e-commerce sales worth $931,490 are made every 30 seconds using a desktop computer; sales worth $269,683 are made every 30 seconds via mobile devices like phones and tablets.
Customers are a savvy lot, and tend to spend online where they are offered sizeable discounts for buying in bulk. The value of the average online order placed by a U.S. shopper is $78. Shoppers also tend to research goods and services online before they make a purchase. Online shoppers visit an average of three stores before making a decision to buy something.

Online risks include fraud and identity theft
Despite the convenience and range of choices offered by online shopping, it unfortunately also opens the door to online fraud, identity theft and data breaches. Total losses due to payment card fraud was $16.31 billion worldwide in 2014, and the figure is projected to grow to $35.45 billion by 2020. For the U.S. alone, payment card fraud is responsible for losses of more than $8 billion annually. For 12% of cases of payment card fraud, the source of the security breach is a website.
Besides payment card fraud, data breaches threaten the security of information that is shared or stored online. There were 1,540 data breaches worldwide in 2014. This was a 46% increase over the previous year and compromised over one billion data records. Of these, 54% were related to identity theft, 17% sought financial access and 11% sought account access.

Benefits of secure payment solutions for merchants
Secure payment systems offer merchants protection at many different levels. They provide the ability to confirm consumer information; to remind, confirm and validate purchases, and to manage consumer changes and modifications after placing the initial order.
This helps to eliminate many common problems that emerged with online sales, such as more chargebacks associated through the product, the products or service ordered not being delivered, and claims by the customer that they never ordered the product in the first place. With secure and reliable order tracking and record keeping, such problems are eliminated.

Who can benefit from secure payment systems?
Merchants who do a lot of their business online can benefit from secure payments. Tech support clients, software support clients, clubs (membership, discount, and coupon), magazine subscription centers, dating services, direct marketing, auto discount / warranty services, online art/auction companies, penny auction companies, tobacco sales (online and over the phone), bitcoin sales, medical marijuana sales, airlines, travel, and credit monitoring services can all benefit from these services.

With accurate and reliable information and order tracking and record keeping, merchants can protect and validate their records.