NAIROBI,KENYA: East Africa’s leading card processor and electronic payments provider, Paynet, has recently become the first institution in Kenya to receive the world highest and most important security certification in the financial and payment sector known as the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS).
The certification was granted on behalf of the PCI Security Standards Council (PCI SSC) by Trustwave. The award means that the Paynet switch and card management centre are now safest environments handling sensitive payments data belonging to consumers, government and financial institutions.
Celebrating the achievement, CEO, Bernard Matthewman said the achievement, coupled with Paynet’s capacity to issue, process and support secure VISA, Mastercard and proprietary Chip and pin cards for banks and other financial institutions uniquely positioned the company as the go- to partner in the region for initiatives in card management, cashless payments and national switching.
“This certification is a very important achievement for us at Paynet as it gives our customers greater protection of payments, card operations and the assets we manage on their behalf by insuring that all security measures (physical, logical, process, and organizational) are applied in the processing, transmission and transmission of all card and payments data,” said Mr. Matthewman.
“I can honestly say that in my 27 years in Information Technology, we have never undertaken such a complex task given the extensive payment services that Paynet offers. Certifying compliance to this global standard required implementing new versions of hardware, software and tools at every stage alongside some other 350 new processes and procedures. We are happy to lead Kenya and the East African banking and payment card industry into a world of high security payments,” commented Mr Matthewman.
Paynet houses the largest financial switch in the East Africa region. This peerless switch is used by over 72 banks in the region. It powers millions of ATM based M-PESA withdrawals for Vodacom in Tanzania and Safaricom in Kenya and the interlinking of thousands of ATMs on the PesaPoint inter-bank network.
According to an updated registry of service providers by Visa and MasterCard and other international card partners, Paynet is now a “Level 1 service provider” and the only institutions certified for this rigorous security certification in Kenya. Switch providers, banks and card processors are required to certify for this standard to ensure protection of consumers of Debit, Credit, ATM Cards.
Paynet recently formed business combination with Interswitch Transnational in an East- West payments partnership that will further expand the region’s pan-African payments vision.
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