IRM and Barclaycard Partnership
IRM Plc and Barclaycard Merchant Services have been working in unison for over 3 years our teams share common goals and business ethics aimed at providing a collaborative and collegiate approach to merchants and service providers assisting them along the PCI compliance journey. Be it advice or clarification on the standard, understanding how risk can be reduced or a conversation with your acquirer to best explain how a control can be met these are all examples of how IRM and Barclaycard encourage a tripartite working relationship Merchant / Acquirer / QSA.
More recently IRM and Barclaycard have collaborated together to define and publish a “PCI Risk Based Approach”, something merchants, services providers and acquirers have been keen to get established. And IRM is proud along with Barclaycard to have been the first QSA / Acquiring bank partnership to have created such a revolutionary and innovative approach to solving PCI. The new Barclaycard Risk Reduction Program aligns with the Visa TIP program and provides for merchants the following key advantages:
- No specific requirement to produce a formal final Report on Compliance (ROC). However aligned with Visa TIP milestone reporting will continue to lead to “safe harbour”
- A true risk reduction program run over a timeline to be agreed.
- Alignment of PCI with other risk management requirements (DPA, FSA, ISO27001, Solvency II, BS25999, 3rd Parties, etc.)
- Clear requirements agreed with your acquirer on what is required and what the target actions are.
- It is recognised that a risk based approach will bring a significant reduction in external and internal costs. As a broad rule of thumb a merchant may find costs reduced up to 30%.
- A pragmatic a realistic partnership with your acquiring bank to mitigate the risks of dealing with card holder data.
- Much greater visibility on merchant progress and security maturity leading to risk reduction.
- Barclaycard are working towards sharing the content of the BRP with other acquiring banks in order that the BRP becomes a portable “Risk Reduction Program”.
Barclaycard and IRM Partnership
