Effective 1st July 2005, online merchants must comply
with the new security standard, PCI (Payment Card Industry). Applied
globally, this standard - implemented in France by Cartes Bancaires
- aims to ensure better protection of personal data provided for bankcard
payment transactions and stored by merchant sites. The aim is to optimise
the security of service provider or merchant servers to avoid any
attempts at fraudulent use by a third party of such data.
The PCI standard has three types of checks. Online merchants must
first verify and confirm that their system is working correctly using
a self-check questionnaire. Those that manage a volume in excess of
6 million transactions a year must have a complete security audit
of their site carried out by a CB-approved company every quarter to
assess their network's vulnerability.
The
e-commerce figure
58%
growth reported by the e-commerce sector in France
between Q2 2004 and Q2 2005.
