Important New Online Payment Checks - Strong Customer Authentication (SCA)

You may have heard as of the 14th of march Two-Factor Authentication in the form of Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) for online payments has now been initiated and made mandatory. At least 25% of purchases made online will now be subject to this authentication as part of the PSD2 (Payment Services Directive)

What is Two-Factor Authentication?

Two-factor authentication has been used in many platforms such as social media and emails. However, now the new use of two-factor authentication will be seen in your payment. Strong Customer Authentication (SCA) has now been adopted by the UK business and finance industries.

So what does this mean?

Well, for those of you who purchase online, you will probably not notice as much of a difference from before. Except, this time when completing your payment, you may be asked to import a one-time passcode sent via text, into a new payment portal to confirm your identification. This is done to protect you from fraud and protect us from failed payments.

Phone Payments - No longer accepted

If you opt to try and pay over the phone, our payment provider may decline the payment as a result we are now unable to take payments due to this new authentication scheme. If you are not able to use the website, we are able to send an invoice to your email address which can then be paid with a debit/credit card or PayPal. However, authentication may still be required for card payments when paying invoices.

Restrictions for those without email addresses

Unfortunately, if you do not have an email address we are unable to take payment from distant buyers and therefore unable to send you goods. If you're still wanting to purchase goods from us, you will have to visit us in-store to take payment on a card machine or with cash.

If you are looking to open an email address we highly recommend using Gmail, a free service provided by Google and is one of the most secure services to use and only requires a mobile phone number to authenticate.

Guide to creating an email address

Think we missed something?

Let us know in the comments below.

Support this blog by buying this blog writer a coffee

Image Use for Educational Purposes - This blog post includes images used for educational purposes, not all of which are not owned by the publisher. Efforts have been made to credit image owners/sources appropriately, and any concerns about attribution or copyright should be addressed by contacting us. These images are used solely for educational purposes within fair use guidelines, with no commercial intent. The inclusion of external images does not imply endorsement or sponsorship of our content by image owners/sources. We aim to comply with relevant copyright laws, and any questions or suggestions regarding image use or content are welcome through our contact information provided.