With new services offering small merchants a way to accept credit card payments on an iPhone (such as the product offered by Payfirma) it’s now easier than ever to ask your customers “will that be paper or plastic?” and keep a straight face.
But accepting credit card payments requires more due dilligence on the part of a business than just buying a cool new iPhone dongle. There’s data security standards to be met set by the payment card industry, and ignoring them can lead to disastrous results. One restaurant was breached by a hacker and had credit card data stolen, and later used for $1 million worth of fraud. Since the merchant was storing magnetic stripe data, which is against Visa’s data standards, the restaurant was on the hook for those losses.
Michael D’Sa, Visa Canada’s data security manager, explains the importance of small merchants insuring they’re compliant with data security standards and some pointers on protecting customer data in this March 2009 video.