How Can 3DS Authentication Enhance My Payments Flow?

As the rapid growth of ecommerce platforms and digital payments continue, the amount of card-not-present (CNP) transactions has increased. While this can provide extra convenience for the cardholder, merchants must make sure they are engaging with digital channels to manage activity, increase sales, improve security, and lower threats while also creating a quick and easy checkout process for their consumers. Due to the rise in popularity of customers shopping online, fraud is more common and even harder to control. For businesses to have success via the internet they must mitigate these issues and help ensure the authenticity of CNP transactions through additional authorization technologies that have been introduced and developed.

Strong customer authentication (SCA) was established by the EU Revised Directive on Payment Services (PSD2) in 2019 to help support the security of digital transactions and is a preferred method for ensuring the authenticity of CNP payments. This technology requires multi-factor authentication (MFA) form to be completed for CNP scenarios. This can be satisfied by 3-D Secure (3DS) technology and will provide enhanced security to support and protect the identity of the cardholder.

Why is 3D Secure Valuable?

Being able to authenticate users when they make digital purchases will help reduce the risk of fraud, identity theft, and other associated concerns. 3DS is extremely important in the fast-growing ecommerce environment because it allows industries to continue investing in new protective technologies and consumers to continue purchasing online. This extra layer of security confirms the legitimacy of transactions and ensures the authenticity of cardholders. As a result, by making payments secure and protecting consumer data, 3DS is an effective and commonly used method for meeting the SCA requirements of PSD2.

Additionally, the newest version of this protocol, EMV 3DS, was released by EMVCo and uses a more advanced process when authenticating. During the first launch of 3DS, cart abandonment was a huge issue. Now with the latest version, users can authenticate themselves with their card issuer. The merchant involved is required to use EMV 3DS to authenticate and confirm the consumer who is making the purchase is the actual cardholder. Then the transaction data and device information are sent to the issuer to be reviewed, they decide the authentication type, and process the payment instantly. This process is occurring invisibly to the user and authenticates the payment automatically with less friction. If there are any questions about the legitimacy or concerns about suspicious behavior, they will be flagged, and users can receive a message with a code to verify their identity. This process has been a less disruptive and more secure experience for consumers.

EMV 3DS is key for fighting and beating fraud. Not only is this valuable to consumers because they will have more confidence in purchases going through quickly and safely, but card issuers will have better fraud management and authentication methods while merchants will have more security and fewer friction issues. Overall, each party involved will enjoy the benefits of additional profitability and less liability being created.

What are the additional benefits of 3D Secure Authentication?

When combining 3DS with TokenEx, we empower your payments modernization efforts across the board while saving you both time and money. This means you will have less risk and more control, which enables you to maximize profitability via increased conversions, higher authorization rates, and reduced interchange fees, declines, and chargebacks due to fraud.

The TokenEx Data Protection Platform can connect with any API for maximum flexibility and simplified compliance, making it easier to integrate with your preferred SCA technology and satisfy any compliance obligations your company has. If you’d like to learn more about the benefits of our payment modernization solutions and the flexibility of our specific integrations, contact us!

Statistics Sourced from EMVCo