PCI Lawsuit
This is a first:
…the McCombs allege that the bank, and the payment card industry (PCI) in general, force merchants to sign one-sided contracts that are based on information that arbitrarily changes without notice, and that they impose random fines on merchants without providing proof of a breach or of fraudulent losses and without allowing merchants a meaningful opportunity to dispute claims before money is seized.
It’s the first known case to challenge the heart of the self-regulated PCI security standards a system that requires businesses accepting credit and debit card payments to implement a series of technological steps to secure data. The controversial system, imposed on merchants by credit card companies like Visa and MasterCard, has been called a “near scam” by a spokesman for the National Retail Federation and others who say it’s designed less to secure card data than to profit credit card companies while giving them executive powers of punishment through a mandated compliance system that has no oversight.
The PCI standards are probably the biggest non-government security standard. It’ll be interesting to see how this turns out.