PCI COMPLIANCE

All Merchants must be compliant by July 1, 2010.

Q: What is PCI?
A: The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is a set of requirements designed to ensure that ALL companies that process, store or transmit credit card information maintain a secure environment.  Essentially any merchant that has a Merchant ID (MID).
The Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council (PCI SSC) was launched on September 7, 2006 to manage the ongoing evolution of the Payment Card Industry (PCI) security standards with focus on improving payment account security throughout the transaction process.  The PCI DSS is administered and managed by the PCI SSC (www.pcisecuritystandards.org), an independent body that was created by the major payment card brands (Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover and JCB.).
It is important to note, the payment brands and acquirers are responsible for enforcing compliance, not the PCI council.

Q: To whom does PCI apply?
A: PCI applies to ALL organizations or merchants, regardless of size or number of transactions, that accepts, transmits or stores any cardholder data. Said another way, if any customer of that organization ever pays the merchant directly using a credit card or debit card, then the PCI DSS requirements apply.

Q: What are the PCI compliance ‘levels’ and how are they determined?
A: All merchants will fall into one of the four merchant levels based on Visa transaction volume over a 12-month period. Transaction volume is based on the aggregate number of Visa transactions (inclusive of credit, debit and prepaid) from a merchant Doing Business As (‘DBA’). In cases where a merchant corporation has more than one DBA, Visa acquirers must consider the aggregate volume of transactions stored, processed or transmitted by the corporate entity to determine the validation level. If data is not aggregated, such that the corporate entity does not store, process or transmit cardholder data on behalf of multiple DBAs, acquirers will continue to consider the DBA’s individual transaction volume to determine the validation level.
Merchant levels as defined by Visa:

Merchant Level	Description
1	Any merchant -- regardless of acceptance channel -- processing over 6M Visa transactions per year. Any merchant that Visa, at its sole discretion, determines should meet the Level 1 merchant requirements to minimize risk to the Visa system.
2	Any merchant -- regardless of acceptance channel -- processing 1M to 6M Visa transactions per year.
3	Any merchant processing 20,000 to 1M Visa e-commerce transactions per year.
4	Any merchant processing fewer than 20,000 Visa e-commerce transactions per year, and all other merchants -- regardless of acceptance channel -- processing up to 1M Visa transactions per year.

 * Any merchant that has suffered a hack that resulted in an account data compromise may be escalated to a higher validation level.

VISA MANDATE PHASE DEADLINE

1. New PCI Level 4 merchants (including new locations of existing relationships) may not use vulnerable payment application versions – those that store prohibited cardholder data. January 1, 2008
   
   
4. New PCI Level 4 merchants using third-party payment software must be either PCI DSS-compliant or use PA-DSS validated compliant payment applications. October 1, 2008
   
   
6. ALL PCI Level 4 merchants (new and existing) using third-party software must use validated applications. July 1, 2010