Stored Credit Card Data

[L33t0Rz]

Certainly been a topic of debate...

Credit card companies like Visa and MasterCard currently require merchants to store credit card data for potential charge disputes. Meanwhile efforts like PCI DSS v1.2 encourage merchants and service providers alike to remove credit card data from their segmented scope and/or render it unreadable.

At the heart of these compliance efforts lies the overall effort to secure card data. If the brand members like Visa and MasterCard changed the way they did business and did NOT require retailers to store cardholder data that would certainly tie up hundreds if not thousands of potential points of breach. IMO the brand members should already maintain a hardened infrastructure because of the nature of their business and involvement in PCI SSC. IMO again brand members should be better suited to retain cardholder data in house, rather than the small mom & pops out there...