Arab Financial Services - the region's first to achieve PCI-DSS compliance

"This new status demonstrates AFS's commitment to enhancing the services we provide for our customers and our commitment to payment card data protection and security," said Shankar Sharma, CEO, AFS.

"AFS is a leader in its field and this achievement adds strength to our vision of becoming the most trusted and respected provider of electronic payment and consumer lending outsourcing services."

Last year AFS joined the PCI Security Standards Council as a participating organisation which ensured AFS was part of the process to evolve the PCI DSS and other payment card protection standards, falling under the Level 1 which denotes any member that stores, processes or transmits more than 600,000 Visa transactions annually.

Achieving compliant status has taken their involvement with the council to the next level.

"Through our involvement with the PCI Security Standards Council, we encourage banks and financial institutions to become compliant to ensure data protection for the end user. Earlier this year AFS hosted, under the patronage of the Central Bank of Bahrain, a seminar on Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) to help raise the awareness of the Standard to all relevant organisations," continued Shankar Sharma.

"AFS remains at the forefront of the industry setting best business practices which other organisations and financial institutions around the region can benefit from."

The process of compliancy has taken a year to complete with a dedicated team at AFS working through all the steps required to achieve the final requirements.

"It has taken a significant investment and a huge amount of effort from everyone at AFS to ensure we achieved each part of the required process. Changing the processes and the way people work has been the most challenging aspect of the project. All the team has worked really hard to get to where we are today, PCI-DSS compliant,"

explained S Jawad Alalawi, Project Manager, AFS.

The PCI DSS, endorsed by American Express, Discover Financial Services, JCB, MasterCard Worldwide and Visa Inc., requires merchants and service providers that store, process or transmit customer payment card data to adhere to information security controls and processes that ensure data integrity.

AFS was certified by SISA, one of the largest security audit firms in the region. With its regional headquarters in Bahrain, SISA focuses on PCI -DSS Compliance (being Qualified Security Assessors of PCI SSC), Network and Application Security, Risk Assessment, ISO 27001 and Business Continuity Management.