Merchant Link SecurityCents

A blog that comments on the latest developments in the world of payments, payment data security and technology, PCI compliance, and more.

Service Delivery Group
The more complex the merchant environment, the more merchants need the right technology and support in place to process payments securely. When issues occur, merchants must rely on their gateway provider to immediately track down and resolve the problem no matter where or how it happened. The Merchant Link Service Delivery Group is comprised of four teams working together to ensure timely support for merchants’ payment transactions. This brochure details the services we provide – from implementation and installation, to technical and financial support.

Merchant Link TransactionShield and TransactionVault Technical Review
Merchants large and small continue to be plagued by data breaches caused by inadequate security controls or insecurely developed and deployed applications which leak or allow access to sensitive payment card data. Security professionals, service providers, application developers and hardware manufacturers are working across a number of security domains to address the data security needs of merchants. Two of the leading solutions intended to address the security of consumer credit card data in the merchant network are Point‐to‐Point Encryption (P2PE) and card data tokenization.

The Value of a Payment Gateway
Data security has become critical to any business. All of these new technologies can be confusing for any merchant, who at the end of the day only wants to ensure that all payment transactions are processed and arrive at the bank in a secure and timely fashion. Every time a card is swiped, a check is written or a gift card is redeemed, multiple institutions are involved in the process, including the merchant establishment, the gateway, the banks, the processors and the card associations. In the midst of this rapid change and emerging payment types, a payment gateway is at the core of the payment transaction process. The right payment gateway can better manage communication with the locally owned banks and small business processors.

Tokenization Guidelines and TransactionVault
On August 12, 2011, the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council (PCI SSC) issued an Information Supplement to provide guidance on how to implement a tokenization solution and how it may impact the scope of a merchant’s compliance efforts with the PCI Data Security Standard. When it was published, there were a lot of questions and buzz in the industry and the first question we wanted to answer for our customers is “Does Merchant Link meet these new guidelines?” More specifically, “Does TransactionVault meet these guidelines?” The answers are YES – we not only meet these guidelines, we exceed them.