E-commerce
Secure E-commerce
E-commerce is now booming in the UK. Businesses wishing to expand their
audience, combined with the arrival of broadband for the masses has made buying
online a much more convenient way to shop for many.
Simply put, secure e-commerce is the ability for your website user to buy your
goods from your website, using a credit or debit card, in a way that the data
is as secure as possible from prying eyes.
There are companies who offer e-commerce using insecure systems, and for these
companies it is only a matter of time before the weakness is found and exploited.
We integrate with HSBC, Paypal, Worldpay, Protx, and we also provide our own secure server
and email encryption facilities for PDQ transactions. And if you want to choose
your own third-party payment system, well, we can integrate your website with
that too.
Click on any of the logos to visit their website.
How Secure E-commerce works
Option 1. Using HSBC, Paypal, Worldpay, Protx or similar
Using this option, the bank or third party takes care of the security issues.
Of course, you pay a premium for it, but it is secure.
In this case, what we have to do is make your website talk to theirs. Coherently.
The goods order is compiled on the client website.
The goods order is then posted to a payment page on the third-party website.
Payment is taken and usually processed by the third party.
Option 2. Secure encrypted email.
The buyers credit card number makes 2 journeys:
Journey 1. From your computer when you type it in, to the web site accepting the
credit card number.
Journey 2. From the website accepting the credit card number, to the business
taking payment.
Our e-commerce facilities ensure both of these journeys are secure, by use of
strong data encryption.
What this means is the buyers credit card details (name, number, expiry etc.)
are turned from coherent text into garbage. Should this data be intercepted, it's
unreadable.
Email, a bit like postal mail, can be intercepted & stolen or simply read.
You have no idea where your email has to travel before it reaches you. With encryption,
even if it were read by dubious parties, they wouldn't be able to do anything
with it.
Only the business taking payment has the key to unencrypt the data and read it.
To show you what encryption does to your data, on the left is the text used in
a plain text email, on the right is a portion of the encrypted version:
| Plain text | Encrypted |
|
Cardholder name: A N Other A N Other e: other@company.co.uk |
ÒŠ£ª.†*èyvfsÌK(|ÿ«¼ÞÌ`íwê‰ÍôÖ[‡žuŽD½ÖbÏféchxƒÇ |
