Report: Payments Companies See PCI Compliance Rates Among Merchants Fall

Compliance with payment card security standards is an increasing challenge for ISOs, acquirers and other payment technology companies, a new report from ETA member ControlScan and the Merchant Acquirer’s Committee (MAC) has found.

Only about one in four payments companies (26 percent) have merchant portfolios with over 60 percent PCI compliance, the report found, a 16-point decrease from 42 percent in 2018. Concurrently, the rate of portfolios with less than 25 percent compliant increased, from 15 percent in 2018 to 23 percent in 2020.

Merchants who were initially compliant but did not annually re-validate were the primary contributing factor to the falling rates, 50 percent of the companies surveyed said. Decreased frequency of communications regarding compliance was the second most popular contributing factor, the report found. On the other hand, of those companies that saw an increase in merchant compliant rates, 44 percent attributed that increase to a greater frequency of merchant communications. Overall, 89 percent of respondents rank merchant PCI compliance as at least “somewhat” important, the report notes.

One trend on the upswing: non-compliances fees. The percentage of payment companies charging non-compliance fees rose to 23 percent, from a historical average around 17-18 percent. Among those that waive non-compliance fees, 77 percent said they do so for strategic or competitive purposes. Another 23 percent said they waive the fees because they don’t feel it increases compliance rates.

Click here to read more about the report.

PCI compliance, payments security, and cybercrime will be in focus at TRANSACT, the one event focused on the payments technology ecosystem. Powered by Electronic Transactions Association (ETA), the world’s largest payments industry trade group, TRANSACT, April 27-30 in Las Vegas, NV, is the place where financial institutions, networks, payments companies, FinTech and technology innovators gather to make the deals that shape the industry. Click here to read more about agenda sessions touching on risk, fraud and security at TRANSACT.