What Every Merchant Should Know by Payex

Visa drops two major processors from PCI compliance list: What to consider before signing the dotted line

May 11th, 2009

Due to major data breaches that have occurred earlier in the year by RBS WorldPay Inc. and Heartland Payment Systems, Inc, Visa removed the two processors from their PCI Compliance list in March.

As a result of this, Visa is requiring Heartland and RBS to be recertified by a third party assessor. This is going to cost the two companies a lot of time and money to become recertified to even be considered to be added to the compliant list once again.

According to a computerworld.com article, the processors will have to meet more stringent security requirements than usual, so it will be much more difficult to become recertified while they are under scrutiny for the breaches that have already occurred.

Even though Visa did not fine clients of Heartland and RBS, the merchants have had a number of customer’s transactions compromised as a result of this breach. Not only has the breach hurt the processors’ reputations, but it has also hindered many of their merchant’s reputations as well. Because of this, some Heartland and RBS clients may switch processors to reassure clients that this won’t happen again.

To avoid something like this from happening to you, be sure that your credit card processor is PCI certified and that they are actually enforcing these standards. If you see anything odd, ask your sales representative if you should be concerned.

If you aren’t sure about what exactly PCI Compliance is or what it entails, talk to your processor or contact us for more information.

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