Payment Industry Acronyms

/in /by

There are many abbreviations in use within the payments industry and sometimes it can feel like it has its own language.

Here are five commonly used acronyms and their meanings explained:

  • PCI DSS – this stands for Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard which is a set of security requirements for ALL businesses that handle payment cards.
  • IVR – this stands for Interactive Voice Response and is a technology which allows a computer to interact with humans through the use of voice and DTMF tones input via a keypad
  • PCI SSC – the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council who were created by the major payment card providers – Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover and JCB.
  • P2PE – this stands for point-to-point encryption which ensures sensitive cardholder data is protected from first entry, while in transit, and all the way through to the payment processor.
  • TLS (Transport Layer Security) & SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) were both protocols designed to provide secure communications over a computer network, however these have now been phased out with the introduction of PCI DSS 3.1