Security of Online Payment
At some point or the other, we all need to travel – be it for business, a visit to our home town, a pilgrimage, a honeymoon or just a weekend getaway. Sooner, we have to use those trains, planes and assorted automobiles.
Fortunately, we don’t live in times when booking tickets is a tedious, long drawn process – taking time off from work, spending half a day or more in queues (equipped with water, snacks and a whole lot of patience), putting up with touts, bribes and long waiting lists. Today, we can just log on to the great www and be done with it in a matter of minutes.
However, while we are pampered with a plethora of choices, these are accompanied by a plethora of questions. Am I getting the best price? Which is a good site? Should I have looked into that great bargain price ad? I don’t want to end up being a data theft statistic – is my transaction secure?
Despite the fact that e-payment offers online customers a level of fare transparency and pricing options never before seen in the airline industry, people are still weary of online payments.
You can now put aside all your worries as the online companies of today adhere to very stringent measures, wherein not only do they have highly sophisticated fraud detection software in place but they also set up separate teams to focus on fraud management.
These teams monitor and review transactions on an on-going basis, to identify potentially fraudulent situations and take immediate corrective steps to mitigate/limit any damage caused/likely to be caused from the same. Thus, the fraud ratio is incredibly small.
However, on your end, there are a few precautionary measures that you can take while making an online payment. Once you have chosen the web site, found your ideal flight and are ready to book the ticket, at this point, do take a minute to go through the site’s privacy policy, advises Stuart Crighton COO of Cleartrip India’s fastest growing Online Travel Company
The companies website should contain comprehensive information regarding company policies, sharing of data like email addresses to third parties, encryption (Verisign is a popularly used certifier, so watch for its logo), and storing critical credit card information like its number, expiry date and CVV number – most sites do not keep records of this information due to a misuse of the same. Last but not the least, take a look at the address bar for the link – if the link says ‘https’ you can conclude that the transaction is happening in a secured environment (the S stands for secure).
Finally, a little bit of common sense goes a long way. Don’t do your bookings on computers where you don’t feel safe. For instance, on your office PC, on a PC in a cybercafe and on computers that might have nasty keyloggers, programmes that records keystrokes, potentially confidential information like usernames, passwords and card numbers.
So go ahead and enjoy the convenience of planning, booking and paying for your trip with just a click at Cleartrip