What is the New PCI Compliance Fee My Credit Card Processor is charging Me?

If your business accepts credit cards, you are probably recently pointed out that you will be charged a new annual fee for the cost of maintaining your company's pay will be compatible with the latest safety regulations require traditional credit cards from Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express. This article will explain what is going compliance.

First, let's explain some terms.

PCI stands for Payment Card Industry.DSS stands for Data Security Standard. The credit card companies have suffered huge losses due to credit card fraud and they have decided to take new steps to prevent that as much as possible to take. These steps include coordination with retailers to create and implement new strategies to protect credit card numbers, including better encryption of credit card numbers, if at a conversion authorization transmitted by the dealerand afterwards storing customer credit card data.

There are basically two ways to authorized a sale, either with a credit card terminal beside the cash (or in your POS) or integrated via the Internet. Some dealers are using a dial-up terminal, and others use a high-speed Internet connection. Either way, the card issuers are concerned that transaction data is transmitted. There have been many headlines about pants,wherein, stolen hundreds of thousands, even millions of credit card numbers. Hackers tap into phone lines and Internet connections per day.

So - here we are. Every bank and other credit institutions, the credit card company will transfer the cost of these increased safety standards for their dealers. So please do not go canceling a merchant account or try to switch to another processor, not the will or will not charge you the respect of the feeFor this fee you will from now on, no matter which processor you with.

Now, let's talk about what you have as a dealer, do, become and remain compliant with PCI DSS.

Their collaboration begins with a Self-Assessment Questionnaire. (SAQ), you can complete this questionnaire online and get a link to it in your merchant account statement does not this month or very fast. The questionnaire will tell security departments, as youProcess credit cards and from your answers, see for instructions to further steps that need to take you, if at all.

A provision to be made, what distributor to fall on you, and that's just a question of how many transactions you process per year. Levels 1 to 4, level 1 over 6,000,000 transactions per year and Level 4 is less than 20,000 transactions per year.

If you only have a dial-up line for the terminal, which are allyou need to do. When you process transactions online or other ways to connect to the Internet to transmit data, a security scan must be performed to identify weaknesses transferred somewhere on your internet connection to check.

In any case, after the SAQ, you will be advised about the next step to take, if any. And if you are a compliant, your credit card will be communicated to the processor and you're done. There's even a logo, you can displayYour site to let customers know that you are compatible, and this will improve customer confidence in your business.

If you do not want to be asked to be PCI DSS compliant hit on your credit card processor. A large processor that does not bother with this new requirement, suffered a security lock and now faces fines of more than half a billion dollars. And as a dealer are liable for up to 500,000 dollars in fines for pants that occur.

TheCompliance with the annual fee is not so much and is a small price to pay, as costs for businesses protect the data of your customers.