One Simple Strategy For Pci Compliance

By Author: Bryan Johnson 1
Total Articles: 19
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The Payment Card Industry estimates there are roughly 50,000 online merchants who accept credit cards, yet still are not PCI Compliant.

If you\'re one of those merchants, by now you\'ve received a letter from your credit card processor outlining the 12 steps to PCI Compliance: Install and maintain a firewall configuration to protect cardholder data, protect stored data, encrypt transmission of cardholder data across open, public networks, yadda yadda yadda.

Quite honestly, It\'s a lot of technical mumbo jumbo that\'s too much for a busy business owner to deal with, yet the penalties for breaching credit card data can be severe enough to put a permanent end to your business. So what\'s a busy business owner to do?

If you have an online merchant account, the solution can be much easier than you think.

First, you have to understand how 99.9% of all online transactions are made. It goes like this: a customer enters their credit card information on YOUR website, which is transmitted to YOUR server, which is transmitted to a payment gateway, then back to YOUR server. Notice the emphasis on YOUR. As long ...
... as the data moves through YOUR server, YOU are responsible for it\'s security.

So, one SIMPLE strategy for PCI Compliance would be to keep the data entirely OFF of your server.

If you\'re an experienced online merchant you know this is easier said than done. Sure, there are third party hosted solutions out there that take the customer AWAY from your website to checkout. The problem with these solutions is that customers tend to get a little freaked-out when they check-out somewhere other than the website they were visiting.

Many third party checkout pages look completely different than the original website. Even the URL on the checkout page is different. Customers might wonder what happened to the website they were on, or even worse, they might think the strange new URL asking them for their credit card information is some kind of scam, and click over to a competitors site. The abandonment rate for third party hosted shopping carts is notoriously high.

Ideally, you need a solution that keeps the data off of your server, yet allows the customer to checkout on YOUR website, without any change to user experience. Fortunately, there are a few vendors who have solved the problem.

One solution, offered by Braintree Payment Solutions, uses a transparent redirect that transmits credit card data to Braintree\'s own secure payment gateway without it ever moving through your server. Because it\'s transparent, the customer never leaves your site and there is no change to user experience. The user stays on the merchant's webpage and Braintree operates behind the scenes.

So there you have it, one simple strategy for PCI Compliance: keep the data off of your server, but keep users on your website with transparent redirect from Braintree Payment Solutions.

Bryan Johnson is the author of this article on online merchant account. Find more information relating to PCI Compliance, and secure payment gateway here.