Starting a new online business is never easy and you will have many important considerations in your business plan needing your upmost attention. One of those is likely to be PCI DSS Compliance (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard).
It can sometimes seem as an obstacle as the requirements are very stringent, even for small entities. Compliance to the standards is however required of all Internet businesses in the UK, so you cannot skip this step.
Fortunately there are ways to help make the whole process much less of a hassle. The one used by most businesses is to essentially outsource most of the requirements to your payment service provider (PSP).
Most PSP's will have the highest (Level 1) standard of PCI compliance, meaning that they are able to securely process an unlimited number of transactions each month. This gives them the permission to take on some of the demands put upon retailers.
In order to take advantage of this you will need to allow your PSP to host your payment page on their secure server. That way any card details entered by the consumer will never pass through your network, instead being handled fully by the payment provider.
Choosing such a setting is not ideal, as customers will be taken away from your website momentarily each time they make a purchase. It is possible to put the payment page in an iframe, where the customer will not be redirected away from your URL. The page will nonetheless be hosted on the PSP's server keeping any sensitive information within protected online environment. This solution however is likely to cost a bit more than the standard option.
Hosted payments pages needn't give a bad consumer experience, as most PSP's will allow full customisation, letting you to keep it in line with the design of the rest of your website.
PCI Compliance is an important security standard helping to keep fraud at bay and it is crucial that all e-commerce businesses take part in making online shopping secure. Consumers will quickly stop buying on the Internet unless they know that they are safe.