Fergie's Tech Blog

Visa Relaxes Retail Credit Card Security Threats

A Ziff Davis Internet article by Evan Schuman, via eWeek, reports that:

For more than a year, Visa has ominously warned large retailers that it would enforce a strict Sept. 30 deadline for many of the nation's largest retailers to either be certified that they comply with industry credit card security requirements or face fines and expulsion from discounted credit card fee programs.

But as the deadline has gotten closer—and the percentage of retailers certified as compliant is still quite low—Visa has been forced to back off, albeit slightly.

In an attempt to boost the number of Level 1 retailers certified compliant with the PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, often referred to simply as PCI), Visa in December unveiled a series of incentives to convince retailers into cooperating, given the lack of success that the threat of fines was having.

A big part of those incentives was offering compliant retailers sharply discounted credit card transaction fees in a program called the Visa PCI CAP (Compliance Acceleration Program).

This month, Visa has been quietly floating memos that will soften the pain for non-compliant retailers, as it's become clear that non-compliants will have strength in numbers come early October.

posted by Fergie @ 8/16/2007 10:13:00 AM