E-commerce Insights: How to Secure Your Web Site Against Hackers

A merchant may decide to store card information as a convenience to the customer or to speed up order taking in a contact center, but MasterCard and Visa frown on storing credit card data for these purposes.

If merchants must store credit cards, regulations stipulate the data are to be kept in an encrypted format, and all access to them should be logged. Further, Visa regulations prohibit merchants from ever storing Card Verification Value 2 (CVV2) numbers — the three digits on the back signature panel of a Visa card.