How to Simplify the Journey to PCI Compliance for Your Business

The accelerated shift from in-person to digital transactions has left businesses scrambling to modernize their checkout systems. Along with accommodating a dramatic change in consumer expectations, you also need to ensure your customer data is consistently protected from cyberattacks.  

In the face of ever-increasing security threats, PCI compliance standards offer priceless peace of mind. From POS terminals to anywhere your business accepts credit card payments, PCI standards provide protections to safeguard transaction information and prevent fraud. The latest PCI update takes effect March 2025, and retailers who are out of compliance will fall out of step with the industry’s best practices for data security.  

With the approaching deadline to incorporate the latest PCI requirements, you should make a plan to protect your valuable business data. If you already need to update your POS system, the right approach to modernization will ensure you stay in compliance going forward.

Simplifying Your POS System Is Key To PCI Compliance

Modernizing your POS platform enables your business to bring your online and in-person retail platforms into alignment. Along with opening up new possibilities for automation, an omnichannel retail platform drives sales and builds customer loyalty by creating a seamless checkout experience.

But if you don’t consider PCI compliance in the early planning stages, you’re setting your organization up for higher costs in the future. Protecting your transaction data is far easier when you simplify your architecture. Separating payment capabilities from the rest of your POS system is a crucial means of building a more flexible platform to maintain PCI compliance. 

Along with allowing payment devices to run more efficiently, a decoupled architecture frees you from assessing your entire POS system with every PCI update. The scope of your work to maintain compliance drops by 90% when payment processes are designed as a standalone microservice. 

When you work with Kitestring, you gain a partner who will identify the right hardware to pair with your payment providers to ensure your project gets started right.

How Kitestring Streamlines PCI Compliance in Modernization Projects

The security standards outlined in PCI data security standards (DSS) version 4 are made up of 12 operational and technical requirements to protect customer payment data. Before your organization can satisfy these procedures in a new retail system, you have to assess your current business processes and credit card handling procedures.

At Kitestring, we apply a comprehensive jobs-to-be-done analysis of your system’s current state during a project’s requirements stage. From there, we define the key business processes and security policies to work with the right architecture for your POS system. Then we operationalize these jobs-to-be-done with the software and hardware your business needs to comply with the latest security standards.

Why Do Retailers Fall Behind with PCI Compliance Standards?

PCI DSS is set by the payment card industry to fight cyberattacks. The procedures they outline ensure organizations who process and store cardholder data follow best practices to safeguard payment information. Why, then, do most businesses fall short of compliance?

For one, there’s no law mandating businesses be compliant with PCI standards. And second, the journey to compliance seems too complex and costly to navigate if you’re using a legacy system.

However, the consequences of a data breach are simply too great. Along with impacting the reputation of your brand, being victimized by a cyberattack damages the health of your business. You stand to face steep fines along with potential penalties and countless dollars in lost sales until your security processes are brought up-to-date. In 2023, the average costs to a U.S. company for a data breach was $9.8 million.

Worse yet, your business will likely lose the ability to process card payments until the vulnerability is resolved. Meeting PCI standards may not be a requirement to stay in business. But the fallout from a security breach definitely threatens its ongoing survival.

Modernize the Right Way by Planning for PCI Compliance

If your business is using a legacy POS system, PCI compliance is just one of many concerns on your list. Maybe your last PCI assessment went poorly, and you’re not sure where to begin resolving your security issues. Planning a complex modernization project while keeping your retail business running as usual is already challenging enough.

When you work with Kitestring, you gain an expert, multidisciplinary team to look at the state of your system and help you simplify PCI compliance. Our consulting service offers the specific skills and experience to identify a solution that will reduce scope, streamline future assessments, and save your business money.

Then, at the end of that engagement, we present your business with multiple options for a way forward with a breakdown of the associated costs. We’ll help you identify whether to build or buy the solution that will suit your business. Or, if you need to augment your team with developers or project managers to oversee the next steps, we can help with that too. 

Ultimately, you have options for navigating toward a modernized, more secure system. If this sounds like the kind of work that will help your business find a way forward, we should talk.