PCI Compliance

The buzz in the payment card industry is PCI. PCI stands for Payment Card Industry and consists of members of the five major card brands (Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover, Japan Credit Bureau).

In short, PCI DSS (Data Security Standard) states that every merchant that stores, transmits, processes or handles credit card data needs to be PCI compliant. PCI DSS are in place to protect cardholders, networks and merchants from the risks and costs associated with credit card fraud. Security breaches at major retailers and recently at several credit card processing networks highlight the need for all parties to be compliant.

If you are a merchant who stores credit card information, or processes transactions wireless or over the internet, you need to submit to quarterly scans of your system to ensure that your system is secure. If you process using a dialup terminal, you still need to validate your PCI compliance, but this is done through the completion of an annual questionnaire.

For more information, please visit https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/