As you may already know, during the last few years, the credit card companies have been pushing for very strict security standards to attempt to cut down on credit card fraud. One of those steps is requiring all merchants (people like you who accept payments from clients) to be PCI Certified. They have also required that software companies (such as us at Insight) have to be PA-DSS Compliant. We have to go through a long and expensive process (at our own expense) to prove to the council that our software is fully secure and cannot be “hacked” to get credit card data from your business.
During this process (which has been ongoing for two years now), it has become obvious to us that continuing to support the PC Charge platform will be extremely costly with almost no benefit to our clients. As a result, we had to make the difficult decision to remove it from future updates beginning in February 2012.
Why did we have to do this?
From the beginning of the security audit process, it has been our goal to minimize the possible liability to our clients by removing any stored credit card information from our software. However, many of the features of Insight rely on the ability to bill recurring monthly payments to a credit card stored in Insight. All of our other payment partners support what is known in the industry as “tokenization.” Basically what this means is that I can charge your credit card and the processing company sends Insight back a “token” (a long jumble of numbers and letters that makes no sense whatsoever) that Insight can store in a database file. If we ever need to charge the same credit card and it is not present at the time, I can charge the “token” and the processors systems remember which card is associated with that “token” and the money is deposited into your account. Everyone supports this new ability except for the PC Charge software. In order to continue to support PC Charge, we would have to store the entire credit card number in Insight which would open all our clients up to being liable for damages in the event that their computer was stolen and the database with that information was hacked into.
PC Charge also adds another level of communication to the payment transaction which now requires even more security. You are required to have a secure password to access PC Charge as well as a secure password for Insight and each one has to be changed every 90 days. The number of calls that we receive in our support department having to deal with forgotten secure passwords and then contacting PC Charge to get their software released to our clients is a huge drain on our resources and takes away from our ability to provide proper support to OUR Insight software.
PC Charge is not keeping up with changes in the industry like our other partners are. New payment methods like “chip and pin” credit cards (available in Canada and coming soon to the USA) are delayed in being supported by PC Charge. As the industry continues to change to make payments more secure, our concern is that PC Charge will continue to lag behind and this will cause our clients problems.
PC Charge is expensive for everyone with no added benefit. You have to pay extra for the PC Charge software and every time they release a new version (which will be required for you to maintain your PCI Certification), you will have to buy an upgrade for it (not from us but from them). This will add hundreds of dollars every year to your cost of processing payments. If we had to certify for PA-DSS compliance with PC Charge, the added audit process to make sure the card data is secured within Insight would also add many thousands of dollars to our annual certification fees which in turn would have to be passed on to our clients (you).
What are your options in 2012?
We would never have made this decision without carefully thinking about giving you the best choices we could think of to assist in the transition. Our first thought was to purposely delay the deadline date until well after your busy season to allow you to continue as you are now until the new year. However, we do want you to begin thinking about your options and you do have at least three options with us.
Before we discuss the specific details, let me remind you that Insight is the only salon and spa management program that actually offers multiple choices when it comes to payment processing companies. In fact, in 2012 we will be offering you the choice of 4 processors which will allow us to support the widest variety of processors. If you prefer working with one specific company, one of our partners should hopefully be able to accommodate you. If not, you will still have a lot of competition for your business which will get you the best possible rates and save you money.
We have also made a deal with our partners to help to ease the transition away from PC Charge. No matter which of the four partners you choose to switch to, once you begin processing with them, we will be sending you a check for $150 (this usually takes about 60-90 days from the date of your first transaction). This offer is only available until the end of January 2012 though so don’t wait or you will miss out on the $150 bonus.
The first option would be to contact any (or all) of our four partners to get a quote on rates to switch from your current processor to them. The process of switching is simple but it will take up to a week to get it all set up so don’t put it off too long. There is nothing additional for you to purchase and in fact you would be paid $150 by the processor of your choice to switch over. Once all of the paperwork is done and approved, we will need to update your copy of Insight in 2012 and once that is done your payments will switch to your new processor.
The second option is to remain with PC Charge and continue with your current version of the Insight software. If you choose this option, you will still be able to process transactions just like you do now and you will still have access to customer support for Insight through us but we will need to remove your ability to download any new updates for Insight. If you did install an Insight update, you would immediately lose your ability to integrate your payments with PC Charge through Insight.
The third option is to remove the integration of credit card payments in your Insight software. You could then continue to enjoy all the updates to Insight as well as customer support but you would not be processing payments directly through Insight and would either have to do it yourself through PC Charge or have your merchant company provide you with a terminal to do all your processing through.
What should you do next?
It is probably in your best interest to call our sales office at your earliest convenience to discuss your options. Every situation may be different and we are here to help you in any way we can. Regardless of what you decide, we need to know as soon as possible so that we can make sure that your software is properly configured and that you don’t have any interruption in your ability to collect payments.
Please call the Insight sales team at 1-888-919-5841 (or you can reply to the email that you received about this change) so that we can make sure the transition is as smooth as possible for everyone that is affected by this.
