The Co-operative Group (Co-op), the UK retailer, has selected the payment product company ACI Worldwide to run its card payments processing operations for card data security across its UK food stores and fuel sites. The retailer, with over 2800 stores, will use ACI’s UP Merchant Payments product to secure its payment data with the latest version of its point-to-point encryption (P2PE) and tokenisation.
P2PE is described as an emerging encryption technique in the payments industry that protects cardholder data in transit; as it is transmitted from a merchant’s store to its acquiring bank. P2PE converts a consumer’s confidential credit and debit card data into codes when the card is read by the payment terminal. The solution delivered by ACI will be certified against version 2 of the PCI (Payments Card Industry) P2PE Standards specifications and is expected to go live across stores in early 2017.
Andrew Quartermaine, Head of Merchant Retail, ACI Worldwide, said: “Against the backdrop of numerous high profile data breaches in Europe and the US, protecting customer data is imperative for many retailers, such as the Co-op, which is utilising ACI to help ensure its customer data remains secure. Using the latest version of P2PE and tokenisation will not only increase card security, but also put retailers ahead of the curve in terms of regulatory changes, especially as P2PE is likely to be mandated in the near future.”
And Cheryl Marshall, Retail Chief Information Officer, the Co-op, said: “The security of our customers’ data is of paramount importance to us. We believe ACI Worldwide’s UP Merchant Payments solution offers us not only the payment processing power we require, but also the flexibility to meet our needs in the future.” ACI will run the service for the Co-op from its European data centre. Among other UK users of ACI products are the Nationwide Building Society.
