ProPay has published a number of whitepapers available for download.  The following liks will open the whitepapers directly.  You can also visit www.ProPaySecure.com.

1) Data Beach Basics for Small Businesses

2) The Data Delimma; 2010

3) PCI DSS Myths and Facts; 2010

4) ProtectPay Overview

5) Protect Pay Frequently Asked Questions

In a move that surprised many observers, the Senate passed the an amendment that would allow the Federal Reserve to regulate “swipe” fees charged on debit card purchases. The amendment was part of the Financial Reform Bill.   This amendment would allow the Fed to regulate the “debit interchange,” which many merchants feel impose costs that are higher than cost of processing the debit transaction.  The new rule would also allow merchants to offer customers discounts if they pay with debit, cash or check.  The Senate bill requires that the Fed use a “reasonable and proportional” standard in evaluating and setting debit interchange fees.  The amendment also allows merchants to set minimum and maximum limits for the use of payment cards.  Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL) who sponsored the bill cited the “outrageous fees” charged by financial institutions and the harm those fees do to retailers and eventually to customers.  Notably, the bill excludes credit unions and community banks with assets of less than $10 Billion. 

Though the bill has passed the Senate, the Financial Reform bill would still need to pass the House.  If the bill passes the House, the two versions (Senate and House) would need to be reconciled and the accepted by both houses before it could be passed into law.

You can read more about ProPay’s ACH Tokenization in the Digital Transaction article: “ProPay Takes Early Lead in Extending Data Protection to ACH”  but we will summarize here.  In speaking with numerous merchants over the years it became obvious that while many were actively pursuing PCI DSS compliance they often did so at the expense of protecting other sensitive data.  ACH data, in particular, exposes companies to significant risk of compromise.  While other types of cybercrime are decreasing, Gartner’s Avivah Litan states that ACH Fraud is actually increasing.  You can read some of Avivah’s comments here.

Although ProPay is proud of acheving ACH tokenization to help protect clients’ data, we are most proud of the flexibility of the ProtectPay suite that enables ProPay to protect data that is outside of the transaction process.  While most, if not all, of the tokenization providers focus solely upon transaction data such as that sent for authorization, ProPay has taken a leadership role in providing both payment card transaction encryption, and tokenzation as well as tokenization of data external to the payment card transaction process.   ACH tokenization is simply representative of the flexibility inherant in the ProtectPay product suite. 

With nearly 4 dozen (yes 48) state data breach or data protection laws now in the books, companies need to be even more aware of the risks associated with storing other types of data aside from payment card transaciton data.  A quick investigation will demonstrate that while important, PCI related data (cardholder data, sensitive authenication data) arguably exposes companies to less risk than other types of PII and financial data.

You can read the ProPay press release here.

You can now get your ProPay Blog posts on your iPhone! The ProPay Blog will automatically format the posts for your iPhone for easy reading. Sign up for the ProPay RSSFeeds to ensure you get the latest industry and security news from ProPay!

Today, ProPay debuted its new Industry & Security Newsletter.  The newsletter is a free monthly service offered by ProPay in order to allow its clients to stay abreast of industry events and news, security and risk issues and other topics that are of interest to companies facilitating electronic payments.  The newsletter will be archived here, on our blog, under the “Newsletters” tab.  You can read the archived versions there, and sign up for our Newsletter to have it delivered to your inbox each month.