Storing Credit Card Information

Question

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Storing credit card details

There are many sites that stores the Credit card information. I too, in one of my application , need to store the credit card information in database. But I don't have any idea how to store them. I found somewhere that we can split the credit card numbers in parts and the encrypt them before storing it to database. Although it seems that a good idea, I am curious how the renowned sites like Paypal and amazon.com are doing it. Does anyone know how they are storing the credit card information?

Answer 1

If you have to ask this kind of question, you almost certainly shouldn't be storing credit card information. It's tricky to get right, and if you make even one small mistake you could cause a lot of problems for a lot of people.

I'd suggest outsourcing it to one of the larger payment processors, so that you don't have to deal with it.

If you want to start learning about the challenges you face, take a look at the Data Security Standards from the payment card industry.

Answer 2

There are many things that need to be done to ensure the card data is secure. What companies you mentioned, PayPal, Amazon and other PaymentsGateway, have gone through is expensive and time consuming. They have to go through annual audits based upon Payment Card Industry standards (PCI). If you choose to go this route, keep in mind that it is expensive to get compliant and espensive to stay compliant.

Another option would be to outsouce the storage of the credit card data to a company that is in compliance with the card storage rules. There are companies out there that store the data and provide you back a token you can use to call the payment data to update or charge.

One that I prefer is: www.paymentsgateway.com