How to increase the payment security of your restaurant

With last year representing another record-breaking year for data breaches, business owners are rightly looking at ways to increase their payment security. Without the correct security measures in place, you could incur heavy fines, suffer significant reputational damage, and potentially lose your business altogether. 

So, with that in mind, let's walk you through the steps you need to take in order to ensure that your restaurant business is as payment-secure as it can be.

 

Complete PCI Compliance

The best method for strengthening your payment security, partially for transactions made over the internet, is to ensure your restaurant business complies with the PCI standards set out by the major card brands. 

The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is required for any business that accepts, processes, stores, or transmits credit card information. By using technology for restaurants such as tokenization, you can ensure you are adhering to PCI DSS standards and therefore doing your utmost to secure the payment data of your valued customers. 

We have more detailed instructions on PCI compliance here.

 

Use EMV-Enabled Credit Card Machines 

Another easily-implemented, payment-security-enhancing measure you can take is to use EMV chip and pin card machines at your restaurants. 

Magnetic stripes on credit and debit cards are easily copied. But with the chip and pin system (that requires customers to enter a four-digit pin), you can ensure that the person making the payment is indeed the cardholder. It also gives peace of mind to your customers by having them complete the payment at the table rather than taking the card away out of sight before returning with a receipt confirming payment. 

The easiest way is to switch to handheld POS devices (and supporting software) ready to accept payments from EMV cards and smart devices, as is the case with POSTRON POS solutions. That way, you avoid the burden of upgrading your POS system and instead focus on your core activities. 

 

Request CVV Code for Online Orders

With the pandemic altering dining behaviors, more and more individuals choose to order their food and drink online. However, your restaurant's online ordering system could potentially be a hole in your otherwise watertight payment fraud defenses. 

Card-not-present transactions are much more likely to be fraudulent. In fact, around 76% of all credit card fraud is attributed to CNP transactions alone, illustrating just how dangerous these types of payments can be to your business. 

One of the issues is that these transactions often only require a long card number, a name, and an address to be approved. These details often find their way into the hands of criminals through data breaches and other means. But you can improve your chances of ensuring your online orders are genuine by asking for details such as the three-digit CVV code found on the back of cards that only someone with the card in their physical possession should know. 

 

Complete Payment Transactions at the Table With a Wireless Credit Card Device

As mentioned above, one of the most significant issues concerning payment security is the magnetic stripe on cards. When removing a customer's card from the table to swipe at a central POS terminal, there is very little to stop bad actors from copying key information on the card to make fraudulent payments with it at a later date. 

To protect your restaurant's reputation against rogue staff members' actions and deliver enhanced payment security to your customers, you should use a wireless credit card device to take payment then and there at the table. 

More advanced devices, such as those provided by POSTRON, also help restaurants accept Apple Pay, Google Pay, and other NFC-enabled digital wallets offering biometric payment security measures, providing your diners with total peace of mind. 

 

Monitor Fraud by Checking the Transaction and Sales Reports Regularly

One of the ways you can keep on top of your payment security is by regularly checking transactions reports and sales data produced by your POS system. Doing so may flag any unusual activity that could suggest a problem.

With data available such as the timing of the orders, location, IP addresses, and previous fraud patterns, you can start to block transactions based on rules and parameters set within your payment gateway. For instance, if several cards are associated with one address that continues to submit fraudulent orders, you can program your payment processing software to reject orders from that address, saving you future losses to payment fraud. 

Even just a cursory glance at the transaction reports will start to reveal patterns such as multiple declined transactions, above-average order sizes, unusual locations, many transactions in a short time frame, etc., that you can then devise measures to counteract.

 

Utilize the Latest Anti-Fraud Tools and Technology 

As fraudsters become more and more elaborate with their schemes to defraud restaurants, so do the tools and technology available for restaurant owners to stop them in their tracks. For instance, payment processing services offered by POSTRON include machine learning tools that can identify fraudulent transactions through IP geolocation, validate email addresses, conduct device fingerprinting, and verify addresses.

Other anti-fraud tools include 3DS2 (included with most payment gateways), which require more robust payment authentication forms. For payments to be authorized, customers need to present two out of three of the following identifiers:

  • Knowledge (Something they know, e.g., password/PIN)
  • Possession (Something they own, e.g., mobile phone, token)
  • Inherence (Something they are, e.g., biometrics, voice/facial recognition)

By being forced to present two of these three identifiers, fraudsters looking to make purchases via your restaurant's online ordering system with stolen payment information are foiled before they can complete any transactions. 

 

Speak to POSTRON Today About Bolstering Your Restaurant's Payment Security

At POSTRON, we provide POS solutions that integrate the latest advances in payment security technology to protect your business against cybercriminals and fraudsters while providing peace of mind to your customers. 

From built-in online anti-fraud tools to table-side chip-and-pin payments, our POS hardware and software solutions provide the highest levels of payment security and are all PCI-compliant. 

If you are worried about the continual increase in online and in-person fraud and want to give your diners the peace of mind they deserve when paying for their meals, then speak to a member of the POSTRON team today for your free demo of our ultra-secure POS solutions. 

 

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