EMV & PCI COMPLIANCE

In October 2015, if your business was accepting credit card payments, chances are you heard rumblings about the coming EMV revolution to convert the payment systems and accept EMV-enabled cards. To better understand what this means for your business? Here’s a quick breakdown of the basics.

 

What is EMV?
EMV, which stands for Europay, MasterCard and Visa, is the emerging global standard for credit card security. American Express has also adapting their cards to integrate EMV technology.  Instead of using a magnetic stripe, EMV cards use a computer chip to store and process customer data. Instead of swiping the stripe on a card, business owners also now have the option to dip the chip to process the payment.

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Why are EMV cards more secure?
Magnetic stripes store unchanging data. Once a hacker gains access to that sensitive information, they can reuse it again and again for new transactions. On the other hand, EMV cards create a unique transaction code for each payment. So even if a hacker does manage to steal chip information at one point of sale, they would not be able to reuse the data for for new transactions – effectively stopping fraud in its tracks.

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Will EMV cards require a signature or a PIN?
At this point, the vast majority of issuers have already issued with chip-and-signature credit cards and signature and pin based debit cards. Cornerstone provides you with credit card processing terminals to accept Swipe, Tap and Dip transactions for all your major credit card and Debit Card transactions.

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PCI COMPLIANCE

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What is PCI Compliance?

'PCI' stands for Payment Card Industry and 'DSS' stands for Data Security Standards. This Standard includes requirements for any business that stores, processes or transmits payment cardholder data. The five major card brand networks (Visa Inc., MasterCard Worldwide, American Express, Discover Financial Services, and JCB) established the PCI DSS requirements. These requirements specify the framework for a secure payments environment. Failure to comply with PCI DSS requirements can result in fines and may also result in losing the ability to accept credit cards in your place of business.

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How do I become PCI Compliant?

In signing up a merchant account with Cornerstone we automatically enroll you in our PCI Compliance program. We help to ensure that your merchant account for your business or organization with us is PCI Compliant.