Have you been shopping online lately? If so, you may have already noticed a change, but if not, here’s the news: paying online is now more secure, and that means it involves an extra step to verify your identity. This is the visible result of the new SCA or Strong Customer Authentication, a requirement to confirm your identity that has just been added to the often mentioned PSD2.

What is PSD2?

Simply put: the European regulation for online payment methods. Its acronym stands for Payment Services Directive 2, and it is a revision of the EU regulation on online transactions. It has been in effect since the end of 2019, and now incorporates Strong Customer Authentication to further enhance the security of your banking data.

With this regulation, the European Union is catching up with today’s technological demands. But, especially, it makes your online purchases more secure and makes it even more difficult for someone to impersonate you. To avoid going into tedious detail, let’s get down to the essentials:

How does SCA affect my online shopping?

The implementation of SCA means that you will be able to feel the effects of this regulation yourself. From now on, every time you make an online payment, you will have to go through a double-checking process to prove that you are the owner of the card.

For example, after entering your bank details in the Panda Security shopping cart, your bank will ask you to prove your identity in one of the following ways:

  • One-time passwords: They send an SMS to your phone with a code that you must enter in the window to which our shopping cart will have directed you.
  • Pin code or confidential data: The bank may require you to enter the pin code of the card or a more elaborate combination, such as the sum of this password and a random number that they will tell you in the process.
  • Fingerprint: Your bank asks you to log in to their online banking app and enter your fingerprint.

How can I be prepared?

We recommend that you keep your mobile banking apps up to date. Contact your bank to ensure that your cards have the Secure e-Commerce service activated. You will also need to turn on notifications from these apps, if they are not already enabled, so that you don’t miss any communications sent to you to confirm your identity.

However, it is possible that you have already made payments with this system before. Although its implementation was not mandatory until this year, some services were already using it as a security measure.

I’m having trouble completing my payment

A lot of people are having them. The SCA is not perfectly set up yet, which is why we are offering to help you complete your payments on our website. That’s why we’ve put together this guide with everything you need to complete your transactions:

If the transaction is incomplete because it needs some action on your part, we will contact you to guide you through the rest of the process.

And remember that you can always contact us if you need to and we will be happy to help you. You can do so at the following telephone number:

0203 769 3439