Re-Thinking Payment Gateways
Written by Evan SchumanJune 19th, 2008
GuestView Columnist David Taylor suggests that a surprisingly large number of major retailers today are using inhouse or outsourced payment gateways to reduce the scope of their compliance effort, as well as their costs.
At some point in the last decade, nearly every organization involved in electronic commerce did an evaluation of payment gateways. So, what's changed?
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-Christine
June 20th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
I’m not sure if we are the exception to the rule or if we were overlooked in the story but we have always been open to how we protect the merchant’s data — both within our data centers and the technology we install at the merchant location to secure the cardholder data on the merchant’s network. Originally when we were added to the Visa certified provider list we did sell on “we’re on the list.†We were one of the first gateway providers on the list; why not use it as far as it will go? But that advantage didn’t last long. We quickly shifted to informing and demonstrating (sometimes maybe even flaunting) our technology. We view our technology as a distinguishing selling point —- after all and as you point out, anyone can get on the certified list via various means.
I’m sorry David, I read all your stories and most of your points I agree and even the ones I don’t agree with your point I still see your point. But I’m confused here on where you are going with this one. A university example is given to demonstrate a case for insource gateway services but industry reports show universities as one of the riskiest places for cardholder data breaches. I couldn’t decide if this example was an argument for insource gateway services or an example where outsource services should be used.
Maybe my confusion is my own preconditioning. I’m used to stories like “in-house is good; out-sourcing is bad†or visa-versa. Maybe your intent was simply “insource/outsource — you decide,†and like I said, I’m not used to that. While I’m a little confused with this story, keep them coming as your still batting over 900 on my books.
June 20th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
Re: the Gateway piece. The funny thing is: I started out wanting to say something very simple, which is that payment gateways built or contracted for more than a few years ago may not provide the level of data protection that retailers need, simply because most decisions were made back then with data security as a minor consideration, if at all. (Even now, many of the providers do not mention PCI, or security. If they do, it’s treated as a simple checklist.
I believe that whether in-sourced, or out-sourced, retailers need to do much more due diligence of their service provider’s data protection, and not take it for granted, based on “check mark” on a form.
However, I wound up throwing in some other ideas, as you can see. But, as I say, my Bottom Line was meant to be very simple.