Safety Tips for Online Payment - Buyers and Sellers

Being a web developer especializing in eCommerce, it's my job to make buying and selling safe and secure by integrating trusted payment gateways to online stores. Here I would share a tip to make your online transaction safer. Forgive my writing if it's too brief or a bit off-course, as I try to balance the audience (both the not so technical and the highly technical one)

Have you ever wondered how safe or unsafe it is to transact online? Well, it depends. Read on...


Don't enter Credit/Debit Card details if the site is not secured. There are many payment gateways, most of it are for processing credit cards payments. If you happen to buy item and you're being asked for credit card information, be very cautious, don't proceed if you don't trust the website or it's not secured.

A trusted website is generally PCI compliant but unfortunately, as of this writing, PCI organization doesn't offer yet a certification badge/logo to any compliant websites, so let's spot at least how secure a website is. During the transaction, you'd fill-up sensitive data, check the URL if it has HTTPS, if it has, your data is safe (When I say safe, your data is visible only to the website you trust transacting with. It's at least PCI compliant on the surface. PCI compliance under the hood is a different and long story which we would not tackle here ). Also it has the padlock image shown at the browser bottom panel.

Choose at least one trusted payment gateway. Be it selling or buying, I prefer PayPal for the following  safety reasons:

• PayPal is a tried and tested, trust-worthy payment gateway.
• Most sites accept PayPal payment.
• You can register your credit/debit card to it one time, so your data is safe, and never shown to anyone you are transacting with.
• PayPal offers money-back guarantee for buyers. For sellers, could win charge-back dispute provided you have the proof of item delivered and received.
• PayPal accepts a variety of many payment options like bank, electronic check and Bill Me Later. 
• And many more ... Click the logo to read more.

There are other secured payment gateways like alertpay.com, xoom.com, authorize.net and many more,  but the one I mentioned here is the one I'm using

See also: How to Check a Website Trust Ratings