Payment security: Can it be frictionless and secure?

The days when customers only interacted with your business through one channel are long gone. Today, your customers want more choice in how they do business with you: online, via mobile, on their smartwatch, or even in the car.

Which means that delivering a frictionless, secure payment experience across these multiple channels is now a requirement for any business—especially as retail evolves from omnichannel to unified commerce.

Nearly 70% of online shoppers abandon their shopping carts at checkout. On mobile, it's 85%. So, anything a businesses can do to remove buying barriers and make the payment process as seamless as possible can drastically improve sales.

And just as providing a frictionless payment experience for your customers isn't optional today, neither is providing a secure payment environment. So is your business making payment security a priority?

How to secure your payment solutions

Strong payment security not only protects you and your customers, but it's also a competitive advantage to win business. Fortunately, new payment security innovations are built with the customer experience in mind.

Consider multi-factor authentication (MFA). MFA can include biometrics as one factor, allowing consumers to gain entry most commonly through facial recognition or a fingerprint. It's easy for the customer, and in combination with another factor (like verification via email, phone call, text message, or an authenticator app) is more secure than allowing account access through only a username and password.

The goal of implementing payment security is for consumers to continue their daily habits while benefiting from the best possible protection. And while progress is being made every day to melt payment system security into the background, it's your responsibility as a business to ensure that proper security measures are applied at every stage of innovation.

The security mindset shift

New payment experiences like invisible payments, contactless payments, voice-activated payments, QR codes, and unattended payments are among some of the latest ways to pay that improve consumer buying experiences and deliver close to zero friction.

Unfortunately, many companies only consider minimum payment security requirements in new technology implementation. So let's be clear: addressing regulatory compliance requirements isn't security—it's a bare minimum baseline.

To prevent fraudulent transactions, you must design for security. Resistance to going beyond compliance protocols can put your business and customers at higher risk for a data breach, identity theft, and fraud. Businesses of all sizes can create a foundation of security by:

• Creating and publishing internal security standards
• Controlling development languages used
• Training development teams on design principles
• Tracking and rewarding compliance
• Identifying open source and control usage
• Delivering on-demand, individual training
• Tailoring training materials to specific company history
• Requiring an annual training refresher
• Publishing data about software security internally

Establishing a solid foundation should then evolve into a mature security program, including practices for developing secure code, minimising vulnerabilities, and maintaining a secure environment. Adopting intelligent security design, developing internal talent, and finding seasoned partners is important in building a more secure business and implementing frictionless payments. Asking potential payment partners the right questions will help you build scalable payment security solutions and keep your customers protected.

Shift your mindset to make payment security part of the innovation process rather than an afterthought, and you'll be ahead of the curve.