Still, the card processing job that merchant services do is a job fraught with risk. It is mainly a sort of number game played by a network of participants and slightest errors at any stage of the operation can result in complications. Because much of the operation is based on permuting numbers, credit card services are a medium that lends itself easily to data theft and malpractices.
But credit card services avoid frauds and data thefts to an astonishingly high degree because of the several security features they use. Merchant services are well equipped to make the transactions of every client secure. The most common security system used by credit card services is SSL or Secure Socket Layer. This is a two-stage data verification process for preventing data substitution, data modification, or stealing of information.
VeriSign is the leading SSL certificate authority and as long as the merchant services have SSL certificate, merchants can rest assured that all the credit card transactions of their customers are safe. SSL is an encryption technology that creates a unique communication channel of its own by scrambling the data. It is also known as TLS or transport layer security. It is one of the cryptographic protocols used for data transfer across the Internet.
The technology works by using what are known as a public key and a private key respectively. The first key encrypts the information that is sent to the credit card services and the private key opens the scrambled information at the other end. The scrambled form in which the data is sent to the merchant services negate the possibility of the information being accessed by other Internet users or manipulated by hackers.
AVS or address verification service is also a security system used by some of the merchant services to make credit card transactions safe. Using this system, the credit card holder's billing address is checked against the billing address provided for the card by the credit card company. AVS helps credit card services by responding with certain codes to convey to what extent the address matches.
For example, when an address with a zip code of nine digits matches exactly, the system would respond with the code X. It would respond with Y when a zip code of five digits matches, and with an A where the address matches but the zip code doesn't. Like that, it has got codes that denote several grades of matching, finally ending with the code letter E for invalid data. As a security feature for credit card services, AVS system is not as important as SSL system.
While business owners should not use merchant services that do not have SSL security system, online shoppers should also avoid using an online shopping facility whose credit card services is not supported by this security feature.
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