Visa Vows $20M for PCI Incentives

SAN FRANCISCO -- Visa USA today announced it will offer $20 million in financial incentives and create new sanctions in an effort to further merchant compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). The new effort, called the Visa PCI Compliance Acceleration Program (PCI CAP), is the first of its kind to provide positive reinforcement to the industry’s traditional, fine-only approach. Visa PCI CAP represents one component of Visa’s comprehensive strategy to address payment card fraud.

“Locking down cardholder data is an important security component that will benefit financial institutions and merchants, and is equally important to maintain consumer trust in Visa,” said Michael E. Smith, senior vice president of Enterprise Risk and Compliance at Visa USA. “By combining both incentives and fines, we expect acquirers to increase their efforts with merchants to accelerate their progress toward becoming PCI compliant and eliminating the storage of sensitive card data. Nothing is more important to Visa than securing commerce.”

Visa USA