With all the complaining about becoming PCI compliant, it is easy for merchants to lose sight of the PCI program’s benefits. Remember, PCI compliance acts as your payment processing safety net—if you ever fall, you’ll be glad it’s there. 

Besides being a merchant’s lifesaver, what are the other benefits to being PCI compliant?

Protection Against (Potential) Security Breaches
I say potential, but that doesn’t mean security breaches are a rarity. They are very real, and can mean the end of your processing days—and your business. In order to become PCI compliant, you will need to answer a questionnaire about the way your business processes transactions. Depending on how you process (through a gateway, POS terminal, etc.), you may be prompted to do a security scan of your system. A scan will pinpoint any weaknesses so you can proactively nip them in the bud, before they become an even bigger issue.

Our gateway’s API provides a unique 3-step redirect process, and also stores sensitive cardholder data through tokenization in our secure off-site vault, so you are already 90% of the way to achieving PCI compliance. 

Sigh of Relief
The process of becoming compliant informs you of the safest processing practices, and which old methods to leave behind. In many cases, merchants aren’t even aware that some of their methods (writing down credit card numbers, for instance) aren’t secure.

Being PCI compliant offers you peace of mind—and less time spent worrying about security breaches, means more time focusing on your business.

Boost in customer confidence
Ecommerce transactions require customers to input all of their sensitive card data onto your site—which makes some a little iffy. Because you require your customers to provide so much detail, it is important to reassure them of your site’s security along the way.

Even if your customer’s don’t know the PCI compliance basics, a positive and secure shopping experience is likely to promote return business. In addition, with security breaches appearing in the news more frequently, in-the-know customers will be seeking out compliant merchants over non-compliant ones.

Avoid costly fines
I cannotstress enough how the cost of becoming compliant (measured in minutes) greatly outweighs the cost of a security breach (measured in dollars). The cost of fines—up to $500,000!—could cost you your business, and/or prevent you from accepting credit cards in the future. Think of becoming compliant like tearing off a Bandaid—the longer you wait, the more it hurts.

At Arrow Payments, we do our best to make the process of getting PCI compliant as quick and painless as possible. As soon as you sign up and get approved, a member of our team will call you and walk you through the self-assessment questionnaire. 

Arrow Payments provides a Simply Better solution for processing payments online. Have a question? Tweet Antonia at @ArrowPayments