Ssl Certificates And Their Use With Credit Card Payment Systems

Have you just got a brand spanking new website, which you intend to make money from by selling goods or services online? If so you will need to take details of customers credit card details most probably to get them to pay for the service, there are two options you can either do this on your own page or through a merchant (sometimes can be called shared SSL certificate). You must not just do this on a normal http version of one of your pages on your website because it is not secure and you are giving internet hackers and fraudsters the ability to snoop on your server and intercept valuable credit card numbers and data. This is not the way to start your online business so you need to look into a dedicated or shared SSL certificate to help ensure you are protecting your customers information and data when they purchased from your website.

You first need to understand things a little though, after all what is SSL that I have been talking about?

On the face of it the only difference to the user of a SSL cert is the fact that the browser address will change from HTTP to HTTPS, hence telling the user it is secure. Depending on your browser you may also see a padlock symbol which means that it is a valid certificate as well. The difference in sites with a security and those without is a lot more then that behind the scenes. With the secure socket layer certificate, what happens is that your browser sends data in a way that only your webserver, which is hosting the ecommerce website, can understand and hence keep out intruders. In this way the pages and data is encrypted and it is away from prying eyes. SSL exists to help protect data that is transferred between browser to server on the internet and to help keep things secure.

The benefit to having an SSL, apart from the above outlined ones, is also in customer appreciation. By that I mean that the customers will prefer to buy things from sites that have a certificate and will actively click the back button and exit sites that do not protect their data. As such an SSL cert can also be thought of as a conversion tool to help with converting sales on your website. VeriSign certificates are thought to raise online sales by 10%! Site visitors are always on their guard when visiting your website, with antivirus programs that tell them which sites have malware to sites with dodgy download sections, they are always monitoring their security, turn this into a plus by installing a SSL cert which is compatible with over 99% of web browsers and with the new 256 bit certs – online security has never been so secure, customers will put their trust within you.

Depending on the type of SSL you purchase they can verify you are who you say you are through domain or organisation validation. You also get to add the logo to your site, to show you have been approved by a certificate authority like Thawte or VeriSign.

By: Felicity Lightbody

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Felicity is a passionate web security analyst who wishes to advertise the best ways to safeguard business websites. Felicity works for a company who specialise in rapidssl certificates as well as 256 bit SSL certificates in the UK. For more information please visit, SSL 247 UK