The PCI Standard is mandated by the card brands and administered by the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council. The standard was created to increase controls around cardholder data to reduce credit card fraud.

is an American multinational financial services corporation. It facilitates electronic funds transfers throughout the world, most commonly through Visa-branded credit cards and debit cards.

MasterCard Worldwide is an American multinational financial services corporation. Throughout the world, its principal business is to process payments between the banks of merchants and the card issuing banks or credit unions of the purchasers who use the "MasterCard" brand debit and credit cards to make purchases.

• also known as Amex

is an American multinational financial services corporation.The company is best known for its credit card, charge card, and traveler's cheque businesses. Amex cards account for approximately 24% of the total dollar volume of credit card transactions in the US.

is the only domestic bank card organization in the People's Republic of China (PRC). Founded on March 26, 2002, China UnionPay is an association for China's banking card industry, operating under the approval of the People's Bank of China.It is also an EFTPOS network

• Stands for Europay, MasterCard, and Visa.

is a technical standard for smart payment cards and for payment terminals and automated teller machines that can accept them. EMV cards are smart cards (also called chip cards or IC cards) which store their data on integrated circuits rather than magnetic stripes, although many EMV cards also have stripes for backward compatibility.

• A First Data Company.

Ignite Payments, a First Data company, provides agents & ISOs the premier business solution in the payments industry.

is an innovative global provider of electronic payment solutions offering world-class, cost effective and superior quality payment solutions. Our comprehensive portfolio of PCI and EMV compliant electronic fund transfer point-of-sale (EFT-POS) terminals include various models within each of the key segments of Countertop, Mobile and Wireless, Multilane Retail and Contactless / NFC

is a set of communication protocols that enable two electronic devices, one of which is usually a portable device such as a smartphone, to establish communication by bringing them within 10 cm (4 in) of each other

• Are you ready?

In US from October 2015, businesses that don’t have an EMV processing device could be on the hook for fraudulent chip card transactions. (This is something called the “liability shift,” which we’ll go into below)