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• February 08 MerchantRates.com News Alert

  • Merchant Rates
  • Newsletter

  February 15, 2008

  Technorati Profile

  Important PCI Update

  Effective January 1, 2008, Phase 1 of the Visa Payment Application Mandates stipulates that no merchant may be boarded that uses a payment application identified as storing vulnerable data. The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) prohibits the storage of the full contents of any magnetic stripe, CVV2 or PIN data. Merchants are at high risk of being compromised if they use payment applications that store prohibited data or have security weaknesses. A good resource is available at www.visa.com/pabp, where you will find a list of validated payment applications (make sure your POS is on the list) and best practices. We also recommend www.pcisecuritystandards.org and www.visa.com/cisp.

  Tackling PCI

  The primary threat has to do with … more

• Shopping Merchant Account Rate Quotes

  • Merchant Rates

  February 01, 2008

  It can be difficult to compare quotes from one provider to the next. The problem is that most merchant account providers quote a qualified “rate as low as” price then surcharge “non-qualified” transactions. If you’ve been asking "what's your rate?" then you are likely contributing to the problem.

  First recognize that as a merchant, you will accept a diverse mix of credit and debit cards for payment and failing to find out how specific card types like signature debit, rewards, enhanced, world, business, corporate and others will be billed leads to higher bottom line costs.

  Action Steps

  The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

  Start with an understanding of Interchange

  Interchange fees are paid to cardholder-issuing banks and these rates are … more

by Ty Hardison

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