Fifth Third Processing Solutions LLC today announced the availability of a new product, PCI Assist, designed to help the processor’s smaller merchants validate their compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard.
The joint venture of Advent International and Fifth Third Bank created the product for Level 4 merchants, which handle fewer than 20,000 e-commerce transactions or fewer than 1 million card transactions per year. While most large merchants are in compliance with the standard, many smaller merchants still are not, observers say.
PCI Assist is a set of online data tools designed to help merchants protect data through security best practices and support with compliance validation.
Fifth Third worked with Trustwave, a Chicago-based provider of compliance-validation and data-security services, to create PCI Assist, which uses Trustwave’s TrustKeeper Web portal. Merchants may use TrustKeeper in conjunction with Trustwave’s PCI Wizard service to answer a personalized questionnaire that simplifies the complex PCI terminology. TrustKeeper also helps merchants complete the PCI self-assessment questionnaire, schedule required vulnerability scans and receive compliance certificates.
Fifth Third is not charging its merchant clients for the PCI Assist service, including the vulnerability scans, Lynn Rhoads, spokesperson for the Cincinnati-based processor.
