Visa Expands Features For Service Provider Registry

Visa said Wednesday (Oct. 26) that it is expanding features tied to its registry of service providers.

That registry, the payments giant said in a blog post, includes listings of, and information about, payment service providers who store, process and also transmit Visa cardholder data. Those vendors must also be compliant with both the company’s own program standards and the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (commonly known as PCI DSS). The firm noted in the blog post that a series of relatively new services are designed to enhance that information and its accessibility.

The registry, said Visa, provides information about different technology support, such as EMV and tokenization, among other security measures. In addition, the merchant using the registry is able to check to see how long providers have been with Visa clients or partners, which the firm said can be useful for those looking for a partnership with “a startup versus an established company.”

Finally, said the blog post, the registry also names those providers that have proven to be early adopters of the most recent version of the PCI DSS 3.2, which debuted in April of this year. Among the key changes mandated in that iteration of PCI DSS, multi-factor authentication has been put in place for administrators, while service providers (such as Amazon Web Services) must take additional security steps.