Piano Covers Online Hits the Right Chord with PCI Compliance and Elegant Online Checkout

Who:

Paul Franklin
Owner, Piano Covers Online
Gloucester, U.K.

Business Before CRE Secure

In 2003, Paul Franklin opened Piano Covers Online. This Web-based company has since expanded to offer more than 5,000 products, including an extensive range of musical instruments and musical accessories, through its two main websites, eBay and Amazon. In addition to a reputation for quality musical instruments, the company prides itself on providing excellent customer service, great prices and confidence among musicians around the world when it comes to online purchases.

"Being a family-owned business means we have some resource restrictions larger operations may not experience. But, we are very serious when it comes to protecting our customers’ information," said Franklin. "Failure to do so would seriously jeopardize our reputation as a safe, secure online merchant, a reputation that is key to our business."

In order to secure its card-not-present environment in accordance with PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards), the company leveraged PayPal™ to direct customers at checkout to the CRE Secure hosted payment page, where they could enter their card information to complete transactions.

A Side Note on PCI DSS

PCI DSS was enacted by the world's major credit card companies in response to the growing number of expensive data breaches. Beginning Jan. 1, 2011 new online retailers will no longer be allowed to host credit card transactions in non PCI-approved environments, and those that are not compliant can be fined, have their transaction fees raised, or have their merchant accounts frozen.

Back to Piano Covers and PayPal

While Piano Covers Online enjoys its gateway relationship with PayPal, their hosted payment page requires integrations into ancillary security applications in order to comply with PCI DSS changes. Piano Covers Online found the integrations to be considerably time consuming and difficult to implement without expensive IT assistance.

"Keeping up with PCI DSS requirements became a significant burden considering we did not have the in-house resources or IT expertise to update our technology with every compliance change," said Franklin. "We recognized that customer service and security could potentially falter unless we put a new system in place."

The Solution

Piano Covers Online began evaluating PCI compliance solutions that would integrate easily with PayPal and provide the secure card-not-present environment that would not require costly updates each time PCI DSS changes occurred.

"We tested a number of systems," said Franklin. "Some had potentially unfavourable terms and conditions, while others were too complex or difficult to set up with new payment gateways. We were looking for a service that was quick and simple and would protect customers from potential fraud at the point of sale."

Eventually, Piano Covers Online found what it was looking for and implemented a payment acceptance service hosted by Atlanta-based CRE Secure.

What is CRE Secure?

CRE Secure is a level one PCI DSS certified service provider and contributing member of the PCI Security Standards Council. The company offers a cloud-based, PCI-validated payment acceptance service that enables online merchants to accept card-not-present payments and easily connect to multiple payment gateways without having to actually handle card data - or assume the burden of PCI compliance. At checkout, CRE Secure’s HTML clone™ design seamlessly redirects customers to secure hosted checkout pages that mirror the look and feel of the Piano Covers Online website. Piano Covers Online can control the aesthetics of the pages including logos, pictures, text and other design elements.

Improved Security Catches the Attention of Customers

"CRE provided the ease and simplicity we were looking for," said Franklin. "The implementation was simple. Unlike other systems we evaluated, it could be painlessly implemented by a person with minimal IT experience."

Franklin and his customers were especially pleased with the seamless visual resemblance between CRE Secure’s hosted payment page, which connects directly to the company’s existing PayPal gateway, and the Piano Covers Online website.

"We received an influx of positive feedback from customers that were delighted to not be ‘bounced’ to a different website during checkout," said Franklin. "Because the checkout page looks identical to our website, we maintain brand continuity and a gateway connection that is familiar to our customers. This provides significant peace-of-mind to customers that might otherwise be confused by a hosted checkout page."

About CRE Secure

CRE Secure Payments is a cloud-based Internet payment security company. CRE Secure enables leading ecommerce software solutions and payment software systems distributed worldwide with secure PCI compliant hosted, payment processing solutions using patent pending technology and through its partnerships with top global payment gateways. CRE Secure is a level one PCI DSS certified service provider and a contributing member of the PCI Security Standards Council. For more info, visit www.cresecure.com or call (888) 453-4885.