Credit card sales processed by the Airlines Reporting Corporation (ARC) last month were up as much as 30 percent over last year and reaching 10-year seasonal highs, ARC’s CFO, Tom Casalino reports. When noting that ARC recently completed a Payment Card Industry (PCI) onsite data security assessment, Casalino stressed the critical importance of data security to travel agents and the travel industry. “As stewards of critical data and the industry data store to which our airline, agent, and industry partners look to for data integrity as well as technological innovation, this has been a top priority,” he said.
ARC's assessment is an annual validation with the PCI Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) that is required of all merchants and service providers that store, process, and transmit credit card data. ARC now processes $70 billion annually through its settlement system. Meeting and exceeding the strict PCI standards for data security goes hand-in-hand with ARC's own data security policies, ARC says. ARC was first in the travel industry to achieve PCI Compliance in 2005.
American Express, Discover Financial Services, JCB, MasterCard Worldwide and Visa International were founding members of the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council.
ARC agents can obtain more information about ARC and PCI data security standards at www.arccorp.com or www.arccorp.com/legal/pci-data-security-standards.jsp.