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Retailers Fighting To No Longer Store Credit Data
Technical Writing Geek writes with the news that the retail industry is getting mighty fed up over credit card company policies requiring them to store payment data. The National Retail Federation (NRF) has gone to bat for store owners, asking the credit industry to change their policies. The frustration stems from payment card industry (PCI) standards and new security measures going into place across the retail experience. Retailers are now trying to point out that many of the elements of the standard would not be a requirement if they didn't have to store so much payment data. "Even if the NRF's demands were immediately met, it would take several years before retailers could purge their systems and applications of credit card data, he said. Over the years, retailers have collected and stored credit card data in myriad systems and places -- including relatively old legacy environments -- and they are just now realizing the data can be a challenge, he said. Purging it can be a bigger headache because the data is often inextricably linked to and used by a variety of customer and marketing applications; simply removing it could cause huge disruptions."
Why should the credit card data have to be stored by both the retailer and the CC company?
Let the CC company keep a transaction ID and all confidential information, and the retailer keeps the same transaction ID, along with purchase details. That puts the burden of security all in one place, with the CC company, rather than scattered around with all the various retailers.
And if there's a trail to be followed, the CC company and retailer can compare records through the transaction ID.