Pci Compliance, Eligibility For The Merchants

Over the years, there has been much talked and written about the PCI DSS norms and policies. The PCI (Payment Card Industry) DSS has now been mandatory for many retailers and online merchants to provide their customers a safe and protective card holder environment. The recent changes in the global ecommerce and online payment procedures have already influenced many retailers to accept and adopt the PCI.

Let us see some of the reasons why there was no PC I earlier:

• Earlier, the use of the online services and websites were restricted top limited set of the users

• Earlier, most people are accessing the web portals in their desktop computer notebooks, but today most of the people are accessing web portals in their mobile phones and tablets

• Earlier, only few people use the web portals for making online payments such as paying bills or booking their tickets, but today most of the internet users using the web portals for online money transfer etc.

• Earlier, there were only few selected banks providing online payment facilities through the debit cards and the credit cards, today there is almost every bank providing this facility to the consumers

• Earlier, there were only selected security threats, while today the cyber security threat is much higher and larger in comparison to the past years

PCI Compliance at the hosting level

Till years, there were more stressed given in the acceptance of the PCI norms at the merchant levels particularly using the specific payment gateways. There is also much stress given to the PCI Self Assessment Questionnaire for analyzing the influence of the PCI integration. Many people these days using the secured Master Card or Visa transactions for making the payments, which is quite safe. The thing is that now merchants are using different modes for proving the payment gateways. Today, most of the retailers using the credit card swipe machines, web portals, kiosks and mobile applications for processing the payments that means there were more threats of card holder data theft than earlier. Therefore, now the PCI authorities are insisting to apply the PCI protection measures at the hosting level to make it more protective environment for the card holders. Once, the web servers were protected with the PCI preventive measures, then there would be less burned on the online merchants for the acceptance of the PCI who are using different modes of payment transfer systems and gateways.

This article is written by Retail Secure team. Retail Secure has in the payments and communications business for over 25 years.