Time and again it has been shown that having an analog business model in a digital world is a recipe for failure. In the past few months many traditional brick-and-mortar businesses, having made little or no prior inroads into this, have either failed or have their backs against the wall. Let’s just say that those mistakes won’t be repeated. We have a classic ‘survival of the fittest’ on our hands when it comes to retail. Many are currently receiving a crash course in e-commerce.
2020 has seen the digital divide widen and deepen but the writing had been on the wall for some time. E-commerce sales today account for about one in every seven dollars spent globally on retail. Within a couple of years, this will be one in five. It’s not just retail alone that is seeing a seismic online shift. Think about finance and travel.
While many enjoy the convenience of accessing services and goods online, there are conversely those who miss being able to get out to physically purchase things, particularly now due to the many restrictions placed on businesses and our movements.
The rise of your phone number as an identifier
In recent years our mobile numbers have shot up the list of the key ways to identify us, now vying with our national identity numbers in importance. Signing up with a provider online and carrying out transactions in the digital world, our numbers are increasingly the most important part of the verification and authentication puzzle.
With more and more people being forced online to access services and purchase essential goods, the notion of digital identity and how we go about safeguarding personal information needs to be constantly rethought. E-commerce and the payments industry need to be a step ahead and thankfully sometimes (or rarely? – we can’t say which!) there is regulation to push things along in the right general direction.
PSD2 and SCA on the horizon
In March 2000, the EU came up with the Lisbon Agenda, the aim of which was to make Europe “the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-driven economy”. The result was the Payment Services Directive (PSD) which entered into force on Christmas Day in 2007. And now there is PSD2.
The goal of the new directive was to provide improved consumer protection for online and mobile payments. Security in PSD2 is governed by Secure Customer Authentication (SCA) rules, which dictate that banks are required to use strong multi-factor customer authentication for electronic transactions. Secure, two-factor authentication (2FA) meets this requirement. December 31st is not only D-Day for Brexit but also the deadline for all companies within the EU to have implemented SCA.
It doesn’t matter how big or small your organization is, if you deal with online payments you have to be compliant. Merchants and banks who fail to comply in time could potentially be hit with some rather eye-watering fines.
With our 2FA solution in your corner, we can help prevent fake registrations and account takeovers, giving you an extra – soon required – level of security. In combination with additional identity verification tools, integration of our 2FA API will bring you one step closer to compliant success. And your customers will benefit.
To win today, all businesses need to demonstrate authenticity and retain hard-won trust. Security is the bedrock for all of this, and you can be secure in the knowledge that Mitto is doing all it can to support the efforts in this area working closely with our trusted partners from across the industry. Trust in us to help you deliver.