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23 Jun 2022

Every month Maybe* gives one of our clients £500 to spend on social media advertising. To enter all you need to do is watch the Maybe* training videos or attend their webinars.

20 Jun 2022

The strategy outlines how the government will work with trade unions and businesses to regenerate retail and build a sustainable Wales.

16 Jun 2022

At the show Cytech will be delivering bike maintenance sessions on the Cycling 101 Stage with their training provider, Spokes People (formerly PJCS), as well as offering The Bike Clinic on stand...

16 Jun 2022

The ACT would like to make it clear at present we are not working with any card processing provider, so please ignore any that claim to be working with the ACT. In other...

15 Jun 2022

It is important that retailers read the document and familiarise themselves with industry standards to ensure they are creating a safe, informed space for consumers to shop and obtain credit.

9 Jun 2022

A campaign that independent retailers across sectors and throughout the country can use to promote their own businesses online and in their own communities.

9 Jun 2022

Richardsons Cycles are asking for the public’s help to cycle the distance from Scarborough to Kyiv, a whopping 1320 miles! All money raised will be going to the DEC’s Ukraine...

26 May 2022

For 2022 Local Bike Shop Day introduced an entirely new voting function, allowing customers to show their appreciation and loyalty for their favourite bike shop! The winning shop that attained...

26 May 2022

Key recommendations from the survey results include universal rollout of fully accessible cycle infrastructure, including parking and storage, rapid implementation of policies that will make...

26 May 2022

Cyber risk is now present in most business operations and business owners are beginning to understand that you do not need to be a digital business to be exposed to cyber risks, only digitally...

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Have you prepared for the implementation of Strong Customer Authentication (SCA)?

Posted on in Business News , Cycles News , Political News

As online and digital payments have continued to grow in popularity over the past few years, unfortunately so does the risk of fraud. SCA intends to combat this risk by providing a more secure trading environment for businesses and their customers.

To do so, a transaction must meet two out of three authentication measures, commonly referred to as multi-factor authentication, from the following categories:

  1. Biometric—such as a fingerprint or voice recognition.
  2. Knowledge—something like a unique passphrase or identification number.
  3. Possess—uses the mobile device registered with the issuing bank or a hardware token.


Businesses attempting to process transactions that have not been successfully authenticated after the enforcement date will start to see declines from issuing banks.

Not only will this negatively impact your customers' experience, it could also drive additional purchase abandonment.

 

SCA preparation checklist

The deadline for enforcement was 14th March, retailers who have not met this deadline can face various fines and penalties. Taking the following steps as soon as possible will help you avoid any negative impacts:

1. Review your approach to payments

SCA covers both customer present and not present payment scenarios. Complete a check of how you're currently accepting payments and through which channels to ensure you're meeting new compliance requirements.

There are a number of scenarios such as Merchant Initiated Transactions (MIT) and Mail Order / Telephone Order (MOTO) which fall out of scope from SCA. Although these do not require SCA, it's important to configure these payment requests correctly to avoid unnecessary declines and mitigate risk fraud.

2. Check your ecommerce implementation

Ecommerce transactions will largely be impacted by SCA. With exponential growth in online payments, especially mobile and app-based transactions, delivering the right authentication experience can deliver strong conversion rates.

For Customer Initiated Transactions (CIT), implement 3DS v2.2 which is the latest version to manage customer authentications as part of your payment journey.

Although 3DS v1 meets the minimum requirements for SCA compliance, 3DS v2.2 provides better user experiences for authentication (especially for mobile commerce), richer data sets for issuers to make an authentication decision and enables the use of exemptions as outlined within the SCA regulations.

These linked together give you the best chance to remove friction from your customers' payment journey and maximise authorisation rates.

3. Check your hardware for face-to-face transactions

You'll need to check if your hardware is up to date.

4. Keep your staff and customers informed

Whether you take payments face to face, over the phone or online, be sure to keep your staff and customers informed of changes to payment regulations.

Most customers are familiar with contactless transactions. Issuers may require chip-and-pin authentication in situations where your customer exceeds a certain number of contactless transactions or reaches a certain spend threshold without prior authentication. This will all be tracked by the cardholder's issuer, so you don't have to make any changes.

It's important to reassure your customer that when chip-and-pin authentication is required for contactless transactions, extra checks are being completed for their protection.

Similarly for ecommerce transactions, flagging authentication requirements reassures customers that extra steps are being taken to protect their online purchase.

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