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Regardless of whether you're involved with
a business, fundraising organization or government
agency, if people need or want to send your money,
it can only be a "good thing" if you
make it easier, safer and faster for them to do
so.
That's where the Payment Central Inc.
"Secure Telephone Transfer" ("STT")
system comes in! By calling a toll-free number
to reach our secure payment/donation acceptance
service, your clients or donors can easily arrange
to transfer funds to your account, whether they
choose to do from their credit or checking accounts,
OVER THE TELEPHONE. No mailing or wiring funds,
no revealing their information to live operators
after long waits listening to low fidelity music
or incessantly-repeating commercials - just a
short, intuitively-simple session with our automated
phone server (which, as is explained to callers,
is not ever connected to the Internet, so that
there is absolutely no way for hackers to gain
information to their personal information) and
the transfer is done! This new STT service is
the easiest, fastest and MOST SECURE method
of transferring funds remotely which your clients
or donors will ever have experienced!
WHEN
WILL IT ACTUALLY BE SAFE TO PASS FINANCIAL INFORMATION
ONLINE?
For
several years now, financial institutions and
others have been promising that there would
"soon" be an absolutely secure method
of passing personal - especially financial -
information online. Some of the offerings, S.E.T.
("Secure Electronic Transactions")
the most prominent among them, have come and
gone (abandoned by their advocates when it became
clear that they were simply not getting the
job done), and the sad fact remains that there
is STILL no method which can assure users that
they can safely make payments online without
exposing their personal information to hackers
and/or criminals - either at the moment that
the information is transferred, or while it
is being stored at the receiving website. There
is even a very nasty Java application (described
elsewhere on this website) can even grab the
data ("in the clear") as it is being
entered in the client server (into a form which
will subsequently be encrypted and sent off
supposedly ever so securely), e-mail the unencrypted
data to a hacker or criminal - and the client
will not even be aware that this has happened,
until unexpected charges start to appear on
his or her bank statements.
Even worse than the practical aspects of the
true insecurity of data exposed online is the
PERCEPTION of insecurity of that data. When
online users are reading every day about websites
hacked into, personal identities being stolen,
and large groups of credit card numbers being
grabbed - and even used or sold, in some cases!
Can the users be blamed for fearing for the
safety of *their* finances. It certainly is
not by accident that a recent, major study conducted
by the University of California at Los Angeles
(U.C.L.A.) has found that fully *91%* of all
online users are somewhat or totally uncomfortable
with the idea of passing their own financial
information online - nor that other studies
have found that only about 15% of all online
users have made even one purchase online.
So,
the true answer to the question posed above,
"when will it actually be safe to pass
financial information online?", and to
the related question, "when will online
users be fully willing to make payments or
donations online?", would certainly seem
to be ...
"WHEN PIGS CAN FLY!!"
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Smart
marketers and fundraisers will therefore realize
that, while it would really be wonderful if
they could accommodate all the people who want
to send them money with a so-called "secure
payment" form on a website ("https"
has such a nice "techie" sound to
it, doesn't it?), it is ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY
to offer more than one method to move the funds!
Obviously, the alternative methods must be offline
(to avoid the same taint of insecurity), so
what are these methods - and their advantages
and disadvantages?
ADVANTAGE(S) DISADVANTAGE(S)

mailing in a check: no exposure online, slow,
several steps to fairly low-cost carry out -
prepare check & envelope, (buy and) affix
stamp, bring envelope to mailbox

wiring funds through guaranteed, easy very expensive,
delivery a bank to arrange can take several
days

phoning a live quick (during expensive (especially
for operator and business hours, or calls arriving
during providing credit up to 24/7) non-business
hours), card or checking requires much employee
account information time and:

the automated phone quick, low-cost, No one
has discovered any service offered by absolutely
secure; disadvantages yet - the Payment Central
available 24/7 at worst that can be said Inc.
no extra cost about this service is that it
requires one extra step for an online user -
a call to a toll-free number after filling out
the order or donation form online; on the other
hand, that extra step is what absolutely protects
the payor's financial data!
And
the most important reason to offer alternative
methods for people to send money to you is that
offering payment online is a woefully inadequate
method - if only 15% of online users are willing
actually to BUY - and pay - online, that means
that perfect penetration of this marketplace
will only afford you access to roughly 7 or
8% of the overall population! Could that EVER
make sense as a marketing proposition?
Depending on the type of payment or donation
acceptance which would best suit your needs,
and whether you are situated in the U.S., Canada
or overseas, please click on the appropriate
button on the left menu to access more specific
information.
Copyright © 1999-2014
by Payment Central Inc.
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