E-commerce Compliance Guidelines and KU Policies

Introduction to PCI

Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards, better known as PCI, is a set of guidelines developed by the major credit card companies (Visa, MasterCard, Discover, American Express, and JCB) to help companies and organizations that process credit cards prevent credit card fraud and breaches of cardholder information.  Any organization that processes, stores, or transmits credit card numbers is required by the credit card companies to be compliant with the PCI standard. Organizations which fail to comply may lose the ability to accept credit cards as a form of payment.

Requirements of PCI

There are 12 specific requirements outlined by PCI. These requirements are arranged into six control objectives, or general goals of PCI. The PCI control objectives and requirements are outlined below:

Credit Card Information & Guidelines

Credit card information is considered "personal identifiable information" as well as "personal financial information," and should be handled with the utmost care, security and confidentiality within University business processes.

Any department processing credit card transactions will be charged accordingly for any interchange fee, Merchant Service processor fee, settlement gateway fee and online system transaction and/or maintenance fee related to credit card payment processing.

Departments desiring to initiate payment options to accept credit cards by using a credit card terminal, online payment application or contracting for payment services should contact the E-commerce Committee before purchasing a machine, software or related hardware. It is imperative that KU units take all the proper steps for procurement and compliance.