Where does my customers’ credit card info go?

In the era of e-commerce and unfortunately, identity theft, people are especially weary of giving their credit card numbers to non-secure websites and businesses. At Cheddar, we’re aware of this issue and want to take a moment to explain how credit card transactions work, and why you should feel safe using Cheddar as your transaction processor.

Most e-commerce businesses must have a merchant account and payment gateway in order to process payments. The payment gateway is where all the action happens– it’s where the credit card numbers are encrypted and stored. That’s right! We do not keep any credit card numbers at Cheddar. We only hold onto the bare minimum: the last four digits of the card number, the expiration date so we can inform your customers to update their information and a reference number used to identify the card in the payment gateway. However, if for some reason, you want to access your list of credit card numbers, you can. Whats the catch? You must have a high-level PCI compliance ranking. Lot’s of companies advertise the ability to give you access to card numbers, but many fail to mention this bit of info. A high PCI compliance ranking is hard to obtain and can take a long time. We know because we have had to go through the process ourselves.

CheddarGateway
A unique aspect of Cheddar is that we have our own gateway. The CheddarGateway is Service Provider, Level 1 PCI compliant, which is as secure as it gets. Additionally, our new pricing plans bundle the Cheddar monthly service charge with the CheddarGateway fee, all at an amazing price.

Data Portability
Another great feature in the works at CheddarGateway is the ability to transfer your credit card numbers, should you want to switch gateways. Currently, if you choose to switch, you must contact all of your customers and ask them to re-submit their information. Because of our integration with PayPal, the ChedderGateway can allow you to have two gateways at one time. We are working on a feature that will allow you to seamlessly and organically transfer information from one gateway to another. The switch is made when the credit card expires (which Cheddar updates automatically) or when the customer switches pricing plans so you don’t have to manually transfer card numbers. This saves time and face with your customer, who will never know the switch occurred if you don’t want them to.