Digital Transaction News posted an interesting article regarding Payment Application data-security standard or PA-DSS and it's affect on software vendors in the payments industry.   Sure, it can cost a lot to get PCI certified, but money is secondary, the primary focus is on the security of the application.   It will be interesting to watch the effect PA-DSS has on the payments industry over the course of the next 7 months...

"The steady march toward more secure payment-processing software is likely to force many—possibly thousands—of small software vendors out of the market of serving merchants and card processors. These vendors will find it too expensive to upgrade their existing point-of-sale and related applications to meet specifications set forth in the new Payment Application data-security standard, or PA-DSS, according David Taylor, founder of the Stamford, Conn.-based PCI Knowledge Base consulting firm.

Taylor held a Webinar on Wednesday about the impact of PA-DSS on vendors, merchants, and the payments market in general. PA-DSS is the name of Visa Inc.’s former Payment Application Best Practices (PABP), a set of guidelines for protecting data that flow through software in POS terminals and other card-processing settings. The PCI Security Standards Council adopted PABP in October, renaming the guidelines PA-DSS and applying them to the other major card networks—MasterCard Inc., Discover Financial Services, American Express Co., and JCB. The Wakefield, Mass.-based PCI Council administers the Payment Card Industry data-security standard, or PCI, the overarching set of rules for securing credit and debit card data.

Merchant acquirers must ensure by July 1, 2010 that their merchants and third-party processors are using only applications that meet PA-DSS pecifications. That deadline is one reason vendors are furiously developing new applications or trying to fortify existing versions."  
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