We host our On-Line shop with POWA who have acheived PCI Compliancy Level 1 - The following information is taken from their website and we hope will offer you piece of mind when using our site:-

Security

PCI Compliance is now compulsory for all transactions online. The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) as a worldwide information standard defined by the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council. The standard was created to help organizations that process card payments prevent credit card fraud through increased controls around data and its exposure to compromise. The standard applies to all organizations which hold, process, or exchange cardholder information from any card branded with the logo of one of the card brands.

We believe this is not just about cardholder data, but that the PCI DSS standard can be applied to all the policies, procedures and data storage of sensitive customer information. That was why we took the step several years ago to achieve Enterprise Wide PCI Compliance to Tier 1 level. This was a costly and long process, and it is not a one off, we are audited once a year by an external company Security Metrics to ensure that this standard is maintained, as well as being an active participant of the PCI Security Council. To try and raise consumer awareness, we have also brought out a PCI Compliance logo, which is present on Powa sites in the bottom left hand corner and through checkout with a simple pop-up explaining what this means and verifying the site’s PCI Status in real time.

what does it mean?

The importance of PCI compliance is consumer trust. Recent articles in the press Retail Week have highlighted the fact that although retailers know that it needs to be done there is still much confusion in the retail world on the subject, citing that there was no clarity; confusion about what full compliance looks like; what is required to be fully compliant; and confusion of which data needs to be compliant.

For PCI Compliance, there are sometimes complex policies and procedures required; it can be costly and expensive to do internally; hard work can be undone very quickly by not keeping your eye on the ball; building the right set of skills internally takes focus away from other areas; technology is moving at a fast pace; and continuous updates to defences are required as fraudsters level of sophistication is increasing. Tier 1 PCI compliance requires an external audit, but the lower levels are self-assessed. Concerned about the prospect of penalties for non-compliance or refusal by banks to process payments, retailers are rushing to do the self-assessment but Tier 1 Compliance, and the protection that it offers, is not achievable through self-assessment.