Client Guest Blog Post by Mark Scheibach, Aloha Golf Card.
When we started looking for a service to integrate credit card processing into our website, we needed to make sure we would have minimal problems for our growing company. Operating a company in cyberspace where purchases can come from anyone and from anywhere presents some unique challenges. We needed to be able to accept payments from not only the US, but from anywhere that travelers could be coming from to visit the Aloha state. We needed a secure method to enable our website to communicate with a credit card processor and return reference tokens, eliminating storage of sensitive credit card data on our system. We also recognized that there might be times where travel plans change or something else that might present an opportunity to refund a consumer’s purchase, so we needed an easy utility that would allow us access to past consumer transactions, from anywhere and by anyone authorized within the company.
The tokenization of the credit card data was important because it only takes one hack to put a small business in a precarious situation. This should be a clear must for any company looking at website payment solutions. Storing sensitive data on our end was simply a risk not worth taking. Don’t short-cut this area of PCI compliance.
Using a web based virtual terminal solved our need for accessing past consumer transactions. Both for the purpose of accounting via exportable reports, and also look-up of past consumer transactions. We can easily access past transactions by searching different field data like name or order ID. This gives us the ability to recall data that was passed from website transactions because the two portals share the same common gateway. And once again, no sensitive data is compromised. Even when recalling a past transaction, card data is truncated, which prevents any employee from misusing that data.
I should also mention that it’s nice to be able to call upon someone for help when needed. When growth spurts occur, new challenges can occur. Being able to get someone on the phone or on a webinar where you can share computer screens for instructional needs can quickly shed light on something that was not understood. It’s nice to have someone there when you need them.
Do your due diligence, understand your needs and requirements. Then check with service providers and investigate their offerings. Seeing that my post resides here, you can certainly guess that we chose ACH Payments for our needs, but needs may differ for others.
