Changes to our telephone payment procedure

Rather than use our website, sometimes our customers prefer to call us and make a card payment over the telephone, up until now this has been something that has been very easy to do, however in September new European regulations (SCA) will come into effect that mean that for a card to be authorised by a bank additional checks have to be carried out.

SCA demands an extra level of authentication when making online purchases. It seeks to create secure online payment methods to prevent fraud. If it were once enough to have the credit or debit card number and the billing address, you’d now need to include at least two out of three of the following factors:

1. Something you know: a password, or PIN  
2. Something you own: a smartphone or a token  
3. Something you are: a digital fingerprint or other biometric features.  

This might mean you having to enter a passcode into a pop up box on the website after clicking ‘purchase’ or with regards Apple Pay or Google Pay using some sort of verification from your mobile phone that ensures the payment is coming from you and is not fraudulent.

Because when we take a card payment over the phone this kind of verification isn’t possible we have changed the way we now deal with card payments with our payment gateway provider Stripe.

In order to protect both our customers (and ourselves) we will still be able to take card payments from customers aside from the website, but the way we will do this now is to send an invoice via email. Once we have the customers requirements the email will contain a link to a secure page on the Stripe website that will easily enable payment to be completed.

This will also enable customers to have an immediate downloadable invoice and for us to get an instant notification the payment has been made.

The payment page will look something like this. See below.

This will also apply for any card payments we take from International Customers too. We hope this new method of payment, while different, will after a short period of adjustment be just as convenient as paying over the phone is now. Please be assured all payments taken directly through our website will use the new SCA regulations and customers (depending on their banks system) will be offered an extra layer of verification.

If you have any questions about this new invoicing procedure feel free to call us on 01508 493 647 or email [email protected]