The Board of Advisors will represent the current roster of nearly 200 PCI SSC Participating Organizations and provide critical feedback to the ongoing enhancement of security standards managed by the Council.

More than 100 organizations from across the payment industry were nominated for their direct experience and leadership in the field, reflecting the varied perspectives of different global stakeholders. To ensure the desired breadth of industry focus, the elected seats were distributed within the categories of: Financial Institutions; Merchants; Processors; and Others (Point of Sale (POS) Vendors, Industry Associations, etc).

Of those nominated, 14 organizations have been elected by their peers in the PCI SSC Participating Organizations member base to serve on the board and provide strategic and technical guidance to the PCI Security Standards Council. The elected organizations are as follows:

• APACS, the U.K. Payments Association
• Bank of America
• British Airways
• Chase Paymentech
• First Data Corporation
• JP Morgan Chase and Co.
• Microsoft
• Moneris Solutions Corporation
• PayPal
• Royal Bank of Scotland
• Tesco Stores Ltd.
• TSYS Acquiring Solutions
• VeriFone Inc
• Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

"We are excited about the overwhelming number of nominations and the response of the organizations elected to the PCI SSC Board of Advisors," said Bob Russo, general manager, PCI Security Standards Council. "I applaud all of those involved in this election for openly demonstrating their commitment to securing payment data. Our Board of Advisors brings an exceptional amount of industry leadership and real-world experience to our ongoing discussions. We are pleased to unite these organizations in our mission to protect payment data and shape the next generation of PCI security standards."

To ensure geographic and functional diversity, an additional seven seats will be appointed from the Participating Organization roster by the PCI SSC Executive Council to fill any gaps in representation and to help augment any under-represented stakeholder sector or geographic market. As a worldwide organization managing a global standard, the Council needs input from EMEA, North America, Latin America and Asia Pacific to reflect the global nature of card data security threats. The additional seven Board members will be announced in the next few months.

"APACS is delighted to have been elected as a member of the PCI SSC Board of Advisors, we will use our unique position in the UK and European card payments arena to provide significant input to the development of first class security standards in response to the emerging threats and vulnerabilities that impact our industry," said Colin Whittaker, Head of Security, APACS.

The first order of business for the elected Board will be preparing for the inaugural PCI SSC Community Meeting, a three-day event convening Participating Organizations and PCI SSC approved Qualified Security Assessors (QSAs) and Approved Scanning Vendors (ASVs) to be held in Toronto on September 17-19.

The agenda for the Community Meeting is focused on increasing the collaboration of those involved in payment process globally. The Board of Advisors will help shape the agenda of this meeting and work with the Council to prioritize the discussions regarding existing and new payment card security standards.

"Ensuring the integrity of the electronic payments system is paramount to VeriFone. The work of the PCI Security Standards Council is critical to maintaining the trust relationship between consumers and the payments industry," said Paul Rasori, Vice President, Global Product Marketing, Verifone.