What is SEC or 3D Secure protocol?

SEC in card payment systems means that your merchant account works under “Safe Electronic Commerce” protocol. What does it mean? This means that when your customer makes a payment by credit or debit card, he will have to validate the operation using a PIN code that the card issuing bank will send to his phone number or the customer will introduce a security PIN that was provided by the bank together with a card.

The advantages of SEC protocol are the following:

• The number of chargebacks or refunds decreases significantly.
• The payment gateway can carry out better anti-fraud controls. 
• Having a POS terminal under SEC protocol creates favors trust relationships with clients, since it considers that its POS terminal is safe from fraud.
• With SEC you can limit a daily amount of processed payments.

The main disadvantage of using SEC in your online business is that it creates one more step that the customer has to go through in order to complete the purchase which can become a reason for him to abandon the purchase process. Not all the card holder are willing to enter the security PIN numbers they received from the bank thinking that it can be used to make massive purchases over the Internet without his authorization.