Is there any risk paying online?

Observing the significant growth of online commerce it is normal that many conventional companies want to offer their services or products through the Internet. Customers find a lot of adavantages buying on Internet: comfort and rapidity are the most considered ones but there are more much that we explain below.

One of the biggest advantages is saving time and money. In most cases the internet offers very competitive prices and attractive offers. For example, the low cost airlines publish on Internet offers in e-ticket that are cheaper than te conventional tickets and wihout extra taxes.

Another advantage is the large market Internet offers. We can purchase products from any country. Not only we benefit by the difference in prices from one country to another, but also gives us opportunity to access a wide range of products that sometimes we can not acquire in our country, such as audio and movie items still unedited.

But, what about dangers and risks? The lack of infrastructure may result in: delays in deliveries, duplicate orders, lack of stock, and even in some cases, incorrect charges, wrong deliveries. But the most important concern of customers who buy on Internet is the security issue while using a specific payment method.

Security requirements of an electronic payment system are:

We would like to mention the requirements of an electronic paymen should carry out:

• Data authentication: In any payment system both, buyer and seller, have which identifies to prevent fraud.
• Availability and reliability: It is a key moment in the process of payment of a transaction where there can be no loss of service.
• Integrity: There must be no way to manipulate or alter information while performing an electronic transaction.
• Confidentiality: The data sent in an electronic transaction can not be seen by third parties for this reason are information encryption techniques.

If we are sure that the system we are going to use to pay on Internet carries out these conditions we can be sure that we are not running any risk. But just in case, we list a collection of advices for shopping online safety.

Safety measures shopping online

1. Don’t use public access or places either using wifi or computers of others, for making bank operations.
2. Don’t access our bank account from email links.
3. Check in our web browser that bank address begins with https and if the browser shows a padlock indicating the safety of the site.
4. Use strong passwords and containing uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers and special characters in it, besides you should use different passwords in each area and be careful to change them often.
5. The questions “Forgot Password” often fill in forms and that would help in case you forget the password should get out than usual, and especially not directly related to family or work elements that surround us.
6. Remember to log out at the end of an operation and not just close the web.
7. Use security software on our computers such as antivirus, firewall, antispyware, Web Browsers, etc.., Update it, although perhaps not directly prevent access to those places malformed, but they could show some kind of warning on it.
8. As a general rule we could say that our banks do not ask us via e-mail passwords and access data to confirm anything on our account, therefore, any mail or message in question in those terms should be discarded immediately.

Paying online by mobile

We should follow the same measures using personal computers or mobile devices when we pay through a common payment method online. It does not matter the device you use for surfing the Net and to buy online, the most important thing is both your browser and the payment method have the safety requirements.

But probably you could choose paying by mobile. Although its use is not yet widespread, banks and telephone operators have spent several years betting on the payment by mobile, dispersed after several initiatives have been consolidated into a many platforms: Paybox,Text2Pay. In these platforms, the user validates the operation through a short message (SMS) from its mobile, which has been previously associated with a credit card. In this case you should check the security policy of the platform and be sure they guarantee all the safety requirements.

Whatever the medium through which you make online payments we should take into account the following aspects:

• How to cancel a payment if your card has been used without permission.
• How to claim if you don’t receive a product after paying online.
• How to request a refund of my money.

We don’t want to forget the new trends of mobile payments: NFC payments and the system developed by In2Pay, but both are already inmature proposals that we should to analyze in depth.