Is Stripe Safe?

Stripe is one of the most popular platforms for payment processing and merchant account services. The Stripe dashboard is easy to use, their virtual terminal is full-featured, and their transaction fees are reasonable. But is Stripe safe?

Whether you have a Stripe account or are thinking of getting one, this post will answer that question in detail!

Stripe Exceeds Industry Standards

In order to protect merchants, customers, and account providers alike, industry standards for credit card processing security are strict. A set of guidelines, standards, and technologies are required that keep credit card details safe. Transport Layer Security, or TLS, is one of them. TLS refers to security technologies that encrypt data from credit cards as it moves from one place to another over the Internet.

TLS keeps cardholder data safe as it is read and processed by Stripe, and the website or store that has Stripe enabled. In addition to hiding the data, TLS also works to ensure that all parties involved in reading and transporting it are exactly who they say they are. This is key for data integrity, lest that sensitive data reach the hands of a bad actor impersonating someone else.

Before TLS, the standard was a protocol called SSL, or Sockets Security Layer. TLS does the same things that SSL did, but improves upon the technology for stronger and more effective security.

PCI Service Provider Level 1

As a PCI service provider, Stripe uses the highest grade of payment processing security available throughout the payments industry. “PCI” refers to the “payment card industry,” and PCI compliance is a complicated process that allowed companies to be certified as sufficiently safe and secure to meet industry standards. Level one providers process hundreds of thousands of transactions annually. With Stripe, full PCI compliance is already built in, regardless of how big or small your company is.

Encryption Systems

When you use Stripe as a payment processing partner, everything is encrypted from beginning to end. Credit card numbers, debit card numbers, and other payment information are wrapped in an encryption layer before being stored in a remote data center with state-of-the-art security. Mobile wallet, bank account, and other information is kept safe through similar means.

Decryption keys, which are used to reveal credit and debit card information when it becomes necessary, are secured in an entirely separate location. That means that even in the event that one was compromised, hackers wouldn’t be able to access other components they’d need to steal information. In addition, Stripe’s servers are incapable of storing credit card information that hasn’t been encrypted, so every credit card is equally protected within their storage systems.

As for your own login information, Stripe encourages the use of two-factor identification to ensure your login credentials are kept safe.

Stripe Customer Responsibility

When using Stripe as a merchant, your only responsibility in order to ensure you are up to date on international credit card security standards is to validate your PCI compliance annually. This is an easy enough process, and Stripe provides easy to read, step-by-step guides for merchants to complete it.

Stripe Security Team

In the event of a hack, leak, or breach, Stripe has excellent customer service and a top-notch security team to help resolve issues. Stripe’s security team investigates any issues rapidly, as time is always of the essence when it comes to minimizing damage caused by a security breach. They also have a reward program for anyone who reports a vulnerability they find in Stripe’s systems. That means that there is an incentive for anyone who lets Stripe know that they found a security problem Stripe’s security team wasn’t already aware of.

Final Thoughts

Stripe is an extremely safe payment gateway and payment processor for merchants and their customers. With the number of merchants and transactions they process, they’re one of the world’s leading payment processors. This essentially means that Stripe can’t afford not to have the payment industry’s best security technology in place.

And with innovations like advanced card readers, and magnetic stripe cards being replaced with computer chips, all kinds of technological advances are making card payments safer than ever.