PCI Compliance Fee

Thursday, April 25th, 2013 by Andrew Parrott in Merchant Services, Small Business

Many businesses that accept credit cards wonder what the PCI compliance fee is and why they have to pay it. It all starts with the information that a retailer gains when a customer purchases a product or service using their credit or debit card to pay for the transaction. The thin black strip on the back of the cards holds sensitive information that can be used to defraud the card holder if a criminal gets hold of that information. A merchant must take steps to ensure that all personal information collected from a customer is kept safe and away from those who intend to do harm to others. There have been some notable breaches of data over the past few years like what happened at TJX companies – the parent company of the T.J. Maxx and Marshall department stores. Over a 16 month period, thieves hacked into TJX’s computer system and stole information from over 45 million cards. This caused serious problems for the company and their customers that ended up costing a lot of time, money and effort addressing the damage caused by the breach. Employees of businesses have also been known to steal this type of information. All they need is to gain access to credit and debit card receipts so they can purchase items using someone else’s card number. These types of incidents have increased with the proliferation of these cards. The major credit card companies like Visa, MasterCard, American Express …Read full story