Over the past year, a lot of merchants have been hearing more and more about PCI compliance but they are unsure as to what it is. The term PCI DSS stands for Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard. It is a set of requirements that every merchant accepting credit/debit cards needs to be in compliance with to help protect the data being transmitted during a transaction. Every merchant must comply with these standards whether they accept payment through a terminal at a store, through an ecommerce setup or anything in between.

All merchants are now given a PCI questionnaire when signing up for a merchant account. They must complete this questionnaire and return it to their processor within the specified time period (often 90 days) to make sure that their account is deemed to be compliant. If a merchant does not return the compliance paperwork or does not pass the compliance test, they could be subject to charges ranging from $5,000 to $100,000 per month because of the security risk that they are causing.

To find out more about PCI compliance, you can visit the following website. They have a pretty in depth faq that should be able to answer most questions.

http://www.pcicomplianceguide.org/pcifaqs.php