Payment Data Lockdown: "More Work To Be Done"

To help small businesses better understand how to protect their customers' sensitive card data and reduce fraud, Visa USA and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce will begin a nationwide town hall tour today in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

The 12-city tour titled, "Securing Our Businesses, Protecting Our Customers," marks the second year that Visa and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have teamed with local Chambers of Commerce to educate small businesses about new fraud threats and how to protect themselves. Small businesses can register to attend the sessions for free at http://www.uschamber.com/events/visatour.

"Merchants are increasingly locking down customer data, but there is more work to be done," said Rosetta Jones, Vice President, Visa USA. "The payments industry and merchants share common customers, a common payments system and common enemies on the fraud front. It's vital that we work together to protect cardholders and this educational tour is one way we are doing that."

Most small businesses gave themselves strong grades on how well they are protecting customer data, with two-thirds (67%) giving themselves an 'A,' some 27 percent rating themselves a 'B' and 5 percent giving themselves a 'C' or below. But the U.S. Chamber of Commerce wants that grade to be higher.

"Making the grade on data security, means 100 percent of businesses are earning an 'A,'" said Sean Heather, Executive Director, U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "We're committed to helping businesses of all sizes strengthen their overall data security by delivering valuable resources and expert knowledge to the business owners and managers."

Additional survey results include:

• Small retailers spend more resources preventing the theft of products and cash from their store (34%) than securing customer data (20%).
• Nearly two-thirds (64%) have made improvements to how their business protects customers' personal information, including credit and debit card data, over the past 12 months, and nearly three-in-ten (29%) have done so in the last 3 months.
• Only 17 percent said they knew what magnetic stripe data was.
• Some 53 percent of retailers think their customers rarely, if at all, worry about their personal information.

A wealth of resources designed to help businesses protect sensitive customer data are available online at http://www.uschamber.com/sb/security, http://www.visa.com/cisp and http://www.visa.com/merchant.