2. Choose the Right Processing Partner
- Strategically Choose Your Acquirer: It’s important to view your Merchant Services Acquirer (MSA) as a strategic choice of a processing service rather than as a choice of the lowest cost vendor available. Your MSA should work alongside you to support PCI on your campus and be a resource.
3. Organize Your Merchant Structure
- Limit Your Cardholder Data Environment (CDE): Each unique combination of merchant, payment channel, and service provider connectivity within the CDE could impact your campus’s compliance. Campus merchants come and go for special events or activities, so it’s important to recognize these temporary merchants. CDE documentation should clearly identify short-term payment points and be readily available if your compliance is questioned or an incident occurs.
- Manage Your Merchant Identification Numbers (MIDs): All merchants must report their PCI compliance annually. Ask your MSA to help you organize the number of campus MIDs for which you report compliance, further reducing your overall PCI paperwork requirements.
- Take Advantage of Incentive Programs: Your MSA can recommend incentive programs for adopting payment technologies, such as EMV and certified P2PE, that can eliminate the requirement to submit some SAQs entirely as well as update and improve your security.
Becoming compliant with PCI standards, and maintaining that status, is a continual process. But the work of compliance is made easier when you start with a strong foundation that can accommodate advances in payment methods, channels, locations, and security standards. As the payments industry evolves, your PCI fundamentals will support changes to the payments process, safeguard your institution, students, and customers, and reduce PCI scope.
Martha Wilson is the senior manager of program management at TouchNet, and has been with the company since 2014. As an Internal Security Assessor (ISA), Martha focuses on security, compliance, and processing initiatives. In her role, she works with Global Payments, TSYS, Heartland, and industry partners to implement secure payment solutions. Through these collaborations, she advocates on behalf of our higher education merchants with regulating bodies for the payment industry, such as the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council (PCI SSC) and various card brands.
- Entry-level IT: Clearing misconceptions in the AI era - August 26, 2026
- To rebuild adult learner confidence, universities must first earn their trust - August 24, 2026
- Schools are building AI rules before they know the destination - August 17, 2026