In the wake of yesterday’s blog about beefed up account security during the holiday season, The Official Merchant Services Blog is going to highlight Host Merchant Services‘ new strategic partnership with HostMySite.com.
New Survey Shows PCI Still Lax
The partnership is fueled by PCI Compliance, which is an important topic right now. We’ve previously cited a survey done by Verizon that showed maintaining PCI Compliance was terrible among merchants. A new survey by Gartner Research shows that 18% of merchants are not PCI Compliant at all, according to this PCPro article.
Gartner’s research suggested that IT managers trying to balance budgets continued to treat security as a priority, but that PCI compliance was taking a back seat. PCPro quotes Gartner research director Lawrence Pingree as saying “Given that many of the technology providers in the security market target their products and help with PCI-related compliance initiatives, it came as something of a surprise that such a high percentage of survey respondents said that they were not PCI-compliant.”
PCI Compliance Keys Partnership
The PCI Compliance issue is something Host Merchant Services is working hard to stem, and their partnership with HostMySite.com is at the forefront of that work. Host Merchant Services has a special offer through HostMySite that focuses directly on PCI security. This special offer was mentioned in HostMySite’s November Newsletter and includes:
- A Free PCI Compliance Analysis of your business by HMS.
- A Free PCI Compliance Scan.
- A report compiled for your business regarding its PCI Compliance issues and what it needs to do to become PCI Compliant.
- All totaled, this is a suite of services with a $100 value that you get for free.
This is part of the Host Merchant Services PCI Compliance Initiative that was started earlier in the year, and that the payment network provider is shining the spotlight on quite a bit as each new report comes in from research firms demonstrating that merchants are slack in their PCI Compliance.
You can also take advantage of these PCI Compliance Resources that Host Merchant Services offers:
Champions of Customer Service
The partnership, announced here in an official Host Merchant Services Press Release, brings the merchant services provider together with the web hosting company located right around the corner. In fact, the relationship has strong historical ties since HostMySite.com was founded by Host Merchant Services CEO Lou Honick. While Honick has since moved on to the payment processing industry, Host Merchant Services was able to easily partner with HostMySite due to the fact that both companies champion customer service as a primary focal point for success.
That’s the underlying foundation for the PCI Compliance Initiative and why it fit together with the partnership between the two companies. Both companies want to give their customers quality service and the attention the customer needs for their businesses to thrive. PCI Compliance is extremely important for e-commerce, and Host Merchant Services has this PCI Initiative that makes it easy for merchants to stay compliant. The hosting company has a lot of merchants that are using web hosting since they are running online shops and e-commerce sites. So Host Merchant Services provides a package that helps make PCI Compliance a worry- and hassle-free experience for merchants.
It’s easy to stay PCI Compliant, and have your business be secure, if you take advantage of Host Merchant Services initiative. There’s no need to let it fall by the wayside, as the recent surveys by both Verizon and Gartner suggest is happening.
All Part of the Plan
This partnership is all part of Host Merchant Services’ bigger partnership package plan –– specifically designed to work well with web hosting companies. This is based on Honick’s experience running a hosting company.
Honick explains, “that’s one of our biggest strengths. Having experience running a hosting company, I was able to determine what worked and what didn’t work in terms of Merchant Services and payment processing deals that were offered specifically to hosting companies and their customers.”
Honick says that these partnerships are part of an overall initiative by Host Merchant Services to provide web hosting companies a fast and transparent third party solution for processing credit cards. At the forefront of that solution is a PCI Compliance Initiative that helps make security standards easy to maintain and payment processing a safe, secure experience for e-commerce merchants or the hosting companies that serve them.
To find out more, you can read the Host Merchant Services Partnership FAQ.