The Lowdown on PCI Compliance

PCI stands for Payment Card Industry and it applies to every single business that processes credit cards. PCI Compliance is a set of standards to ensure that each merchant is properly processing with effective security precautions. It is confirmed through a series of questions answered annually, and infrequently, an IP scan is required.

Usually, when a merchant does not complete the questionnaire, they are labeled as “non-compliant”. This title is coupled with a fee from major credit card companies like Discover, Visa, JCB, MasterCard, and American Express. These major credit card companies are the founders of the PCI standard from the desire to ensure that each merchant, which is any business that accepts credit cards as a form of payment, is handling their customers’ cards in a secure manner. When you process with MAX, we remind you to complete your PCI Compliance so you do not incur a charge. It is vital to note that this charge does not come from MAX Payment Solutions, but from the above credit card companies.

To recap, PCI Compliance a set of security precautions to validate that you are processing your credit card information securely. To be compliant, a questionnaire needs to be answered and sometimes an IP scan is required. If it is not completed in a timely manner, a fee is issued and can be seen on your merchant processing statement. We do our best to make sure each merchant does not have to face the non-compliant charge.

We hope this briefing helped your understanding of PCI Compliance grow! If you are already a customer of MAX, we would like to thank-you for switching to MAX and if you are not part of the MAX Payment Team, we would love to have you join. We assess your current processing statement for free and explain the numbers with you. For more information, feel free to email or call at info@maxpaymentsolutions.com or (856) 825-2000.