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PCI Finally Addresses Vending Machines, Phones And Kiosks That Take Cards. For Retailers, Though, It’s Still Tricky
The loyalty and confidence you’ve built with your brand will come back to haunt you.
The PCI Council’s new rules, insofar as they go, are quite strong and necessary. Our concern is solely with the “insofar as they go.” Without the context of a timeline and related rules, this document may certainly offer a comforting tech list of what manufacturers have to include in upcoming releases, but it offers little concrete comfort to retailers.
Also, for some manufacturers, those new lab fees to PCI (don’t kid yourself: With every device that needs to be tested, tweaked and retested, those fees will add up to some non-trivial totals) may push for price increases.
How much are the fees? Well, the lab fees are whatever the market will bear, another PCI document reports. “All testing-related fees and dates are negotiated between the vendor and laboratory, and the vendor pays all fees directly to the laboratory. If a discrepancy requires the vendor to modify the physical design of the payment security device or the firmware, the payment security device must be resubmitted for a new test cycle and the laboratory will invoice the vendor accordingly.”
But PCI still gets its cut, which is understandable. Beyond the lab fees, “vendors are assessed a $2,000 fee for every new evaluation report received. In addition, vendors will be assessed an annual listing or maintenance fee of $1,000 for each existing PCI approval. All initial evaluations under a major version (e.g., 2.x, 3.x, etc.) of the security requirements for a given product shall constitute a new evaluation and shall receive a new approval number and be billed accordingly.”
On the plus side, retailers can certainly set their own timetables. “As of X-and-Y date, we will accept no systems that don’t comply with the new PTS rules, with lab results to back it up.” But how much of a delay—especially with mobile devices—is any chain willing to accept? That’s why this timetable needs to come from PCI or Visa, so that the delays—if any—can be equally forced on all chains and all of their rivals.
The PTS rules tie directly into last month’s release of new Point-to-Point Encryption rules that are not slated to kick in until Spring 2012. Those P2PE changes dropped the number of requirements P2PE-compliant chains must worry about, all the way from 12 to merely two requirements.
But based on the released PTS guidelines, there is no timing listed.
-Marc
October 20th, 2011 at 11:58 am
PCI’s timing is perfect. They release their PIN guidlines for kiosks approximately two weeks after the Durbin Amendment killed the small ticket purchase rates. I know, this guildline is not kiosk specific, I just find the timing kind of amusing.