On Wednesday, 9 September, Visa held a webcast to discuss the implications of TDES mandates for merchants and acquirers. Additionally, Visa released an update to their FAQ on TDES last week at the following address: www.visa.com/PIN.

It appears that the main purpose of the update is to address issues that were generated from Visa’s April release of their general PIN Entry Device (PED) FAQ. Among the industry, the biggest questions were “How does this affect PA-DSS?” and “Does this mean the merchant no longer needs to process in TDES?”. Both of these answers, along with others, were answered concisely with this latest update.

The main points are outlined below:
1. No changes to POS requirements or PA-DSS; previous mandates apply
2. TDES is still the expected standard & liabilty will be transferred to acquirers/merchants that are not using TDES after July 1, 2010 mandate
3. No future impact on PCI compliance for purchasing currently-certified devices (i.e. future mandates will apply to new dispensers only)

Further information is available at www.visa.com/PIN in the document “US POS TDES Frequently Asked Questions.”