Payday loan businesses are one of the fastest-growing business sectors globally. And why not.
After all, there are very few businesses that can offer a 34% ROI (return on investment) in such a short period. But, here’s the thing about this opportunity goldmine.
On one hand, the payday loan industry gives you an opportunity to charge high interest from your consumers. But the other side hints of vulnerability.
Most payday loan businesses operations are conducted online. This creates the sweet spot for fraudsters to take undue advantage of the technological lags and launder money through your organization.
What follows is a significant loss for your business both in short-term monetary resources and long-term business authenticity. This makes fraud prevention tools critical for payday loan businesses.
These tools ensure to validate the authenticity of the consumers of your business while keeping the customer experience intact.
In this post, we discuss nine protection tools to safeguard your payday loan business from every scammer in 2021.
Top 9 tools every payday loan company should know about
Here’s the truth about the payday loan industry.
The more it rises in demand, the higher will be the risks for your business to be attacked by scammers and fraudsters. This means at the core the best scam prevention tools that you can deploy in your business operations must be comprehensive and evolving. This is the only way you can keep your business safe from every new scam that takes place in the landscape.
The problem is finding such tools takes a bit of research, time, and experiment. But it doesn’t have to be.
Following are the top 9 tools that you can integrate into your system today to keep your business safe in 2021.
1. Anti-virus software
Installing an antivirus is the foundation of creating a safe environment for your payday loan business. No matter what application you are using, banking app, payment gateway, or other financial software, an anti-virus integration shall be a must.
This will safeguard your servers and systems from being attacked by every kind of cyberattacks like malware, trojan, and more. A pro tip here is to ensure your antivirus is kept updated for best performance. McAfee Antivirus is an excellent tool here. With flexible plans that scale as per your business needs, this solution is user-friendly, efficient yet affordable.
2. Real-time monitoring
Payday loan business scammers are becoming more intelligent each passing day.
Their methods to steal sensitive information from your database and servers are becoming even more advanced. This makes tracking your online traffic activities critical to ensure you are protected completely. As they say, a stitch in time saves nine.
A real-time monitoring software tracks and identifies any kind of unusual or suspicious activities like keyloggers on your website and reports them to you. This enables you to respond to potential threats in minimal time. A powerful tool to consider here is Sophos Home. This software is provided with AI-enabled security to track your system from every kind of threat in real-time.
3. SSL (secure sockets layer) certificates
This solution is used to encrypt communication between your website and a customer’s computer.
SSL certificates are not cheap but are one of the best investments that you can ever do to ensure your business’s safety. You want to ensure that you are providing the customer with a safe environment where their credit card information is secure. SSLShopper is an excellent tool regarding this.
With the help of this tool, you can automate all your protection tasks. From testing, checking, generation, verification, conversion, and managing other SSL issues, every task is taken care of by the software. What follows is a decluttered workspace. But that is not all.
The software allows you to see logs whenever a hacker attempts to steal your customer’s credit card information.
Isn’t that a powerful feature?
4. Secure FTP
This solution is used to protect your website from being hacked.
There are many ways hackers can get to your website. For example, trojans can download files to compromise your website. Filezilla is one of the most widely used tools to eradicate this problem. This open-source software helps you deal with all your FTP solutions.
Any time a customer uploads an image or a video, integrating this software ensures that file uploads and downloads are performed through a secured line of network.
The best part is this software comes both in paid and free versions.
5. Anti-spam tools
Phishing is one of the most common ways modern hackers compromise your server systems today.
Mails from hackers who impersonate real customers to fetch sensitive information from your servers are something you would face every day. While some of these emails might look like obvious spam to you, others might not be so easy to trace. This makes installing anti-spam tools critical for your payday loan business.
An ideal anti-spam tool is a powerful spam-blocker ensuring your servers are secured from mails that are potential information thefts. Mailwasher is an incredibly powerful tool to consider here. This tool has integration capabilities with every major email service provider, Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, and more. It ensures to keep your payment gateways and financial transaction environments safe and leakproof.
6. Secured API
Your online address, your website is constantly exposed to cyber threats. Your data and sensitive information like transaction details, identity details, bank details, and more all can get compromised by one single attack. This makes securing your API (application programming interface) critical for your business safety.
To do this, Owasp is a great tool. It is free, open-source software that makes measuring potential risks easy via a rating methodology in a single dashboard. Using an API certainly curbs down the risks here. Linking your website and application creates a single safe communication channel for your website and applications. This keeps hackers at bay.
7. Security tokens
Security tokens are a great way to ensure authentication on your business website. But how do they work really?
Tokens are used for one and all and they are used for the entire application software of your payday loan company. They are like your electronic identity. PolyMath is a powerful tool to consider here. Integrating the power of blockchain technology, this platform gives comprehensive token security to your payday loan business. So far they have deployed 200+ tokens and a 4 layer security.
You should have a unique and secure token for each website. You want to make sure that hackers cannot compromise your API and get into your website.
8. Two-factor authentication
Payday loan identity theft is one of the most common scams that your business landscape is exposed to. Establishing two-factor authentication ensures that you know who you are truly dealing with. It establishes the genuinity of the person whom you are corresponding to.
A powerful two-factor authentication solution ensures there is no usage of fake or stolen login information in the process. To do this, there are multiple methods that a tool integrates.
OTP, LastPass authenticator, and code scanner are three of the most common methods. Google Authenticator is one of the best authenticators you can integrate in your system. It uses a code scanner to validate the authenticity. Thus, works directly on android or IOS devices. A pro tip here would be to create a time-sensitive activity window that expires after every session. This will ensure higher safety for your business and customers alike.
9. Track consumer details
Whenever you are communicating with your customer have a check on their number background. Taking calls on Zoom and face-to-face is always advisable to avoid identity theft. Using zoom for meeting to know is good. But their IPs checked.
Is the IP address location is same as the borrower location from where it claims to be?
There are many tools out in the market that will help you track IP and phone numbers.
Before proceeding with the loan, gain trust in your borrower by getting his identity checked.
Creating locks is one of the best ways to ensure high security around your business. If you see something fishy ask the borrower and you will get your answer. And if you were right, then you saved your payday loan business from being scammed.
Conclusion
Payday loans are an extremely high-risk industry. When you are investing in a business like this, you want to ensure that you are using all of the tools that you need to protect your business. This is not something that you want to gamble on.
Sure, the above fraud prevention tools will help you to secure your business but to create optimal security you need to go deeper.
This often starts from ensuring you are in touch with your consumers consistently. Ensuring they are educated about the current frauds and protection methods will help you create a robust environment of safe and secured transactions.
Now when you know how to prevent your payday loan business from falling into the traps of malpractices, it is time to put the knowledge to use.
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