Maximize the value of your data

A credit card vault is an encrypted storage service that protects your customer’s sensitive payment information while still allowing you to invoice and bill clients. By storing this data in an independent card vault, such as Chargezoom, a business has more ownership over that information allowing a business to change payment providers without the need to manually collect or enter sensitive payment details.

Credit card tokenization is a solution that aims to protect payment card data entered into any system by obfuscating or encrypting the card details and replacing it with a token value. For example, you may see a credit card token expressed as “Visa ending in-1234”.

Tokenizing payment details is not only an important step in achieving PCI DSS requirements, but it also assures your customers that you are handling their data in a secure way. By not exposing full credit card details on transactions or internal systems, you limit the likelihood that the information can be breached or stolen. By storing tokens instead of sensitive card data, you greatly mitigate your security risk.

PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) is a worldwide standard for the secure handling of payment card data, first crafted by the major payment card brands in order to help prevent payment card fraud and protect cardholder data. Compliance is achieved after businesses verifiably fulfill all PCI DSS requirements, which is mandatory for all entities that handle consumer payment data.

PCI DSS requirements apply to any and all businesses that collect, store, or transmit payment card data. This includes merchants, marketplaces, E-Commerce businesses and even software solution providers who come in contact with sensitive payment data. Additionally, the level of PCI Compliance needed depends on how many transactions are processed per year; or may be a prerequisite for partnering with certain technical or financial institutions who’ve adopted a security-first mindset.

Every business has different levels of compliance that they must maintain to avoid penalties. Depending on your exact business scenario you could be facing monthly penalties of hundreds to thousands of dollars in fees for non compliance. 

Additionally, certain vendors may deactivate or cancel your accounts for non compliance. Most payment processors will provide a reasonable window for you to make corrections however it is possible that your account will be paused or temporarily suspended until the account is fully compliant. Check your payment processor contract and statement for details on whether compliance assistance is available to you and the penalty fees that apply for PCI non compliance.

The data that is stored in the vault does not change, so if you opt to change your payment processor you will NOT need to re-collect or re-enter payment information.

Customer payment details that are collecting within Chargezoom are automatically stored in the secure credit card vault. Whether your customer enters their own detail on a payment form, invoice, Customer Portal, etc. or the information is manually entered by your staff (ex: a customer calls in with payment information), those details are instantly tokenized and stored.