Stephen McAllister, president, McAllister Software Systems Inc.
For Stephen McAllister's veterinary customers, PCI DSS compliance "is a really hot-button topic these days," he says. "They are concerned about it, and want to be sure they're in compliance."
As president of McAllister Payment Solutions Inc., McAllister is grateful for the help he's received from Element Payment Services. "Element made sure that the integration of our software with their platform was seamless, he said. And, they were particularly helpful in ensuring that the way our software shares customer information the Element Express Processing Platform, comply with the complex PCI DSS requirements. "We wouldn't have known how to be PCI compliant without Element."
"Element has shared its PCI experience with a lot of training, instruction and materials we can use to answer our customers' questions," says McAllister. That helps the software company become an even more trusted, and important, part of its customers' businesses.
"Our customers know McAllister Payment Solutions as a company with a high degree of integrity, and customer focus," says McAllister. "That relationship allows us a much greater opportunity to offer this service to our customers" than transaction processing firms without such close ties to the industry.
McAllister's search for a processing service began in early 2007 with queries and on-site visits to several payment processing companies. On a visit to Element's Phoenix headquarters, "we were blown away by their maturity as a processing company, their depth of experience" as well as their commitment to their customers, remembers President Stephen McAllister.
While McAllister was familiar with writing interfaces for its software using XML (one of several integration interfaces offered by Element) it did require some help implementing some of the specific practices payment services require to process data. But "if we had a question, Element picked up the phone, and if they didn't answer the phone immediately, we would hear from them a minute or two later," he says.
The PASS (Payment Account Secure Storage) within Element Express also allows veterinary clients to charge a customer's payment card in multiple installments, without violating PCI DSS standards by keeping complete cardholder information on file. Using PASS, the cardholder information is sent once, in encrypted form, to Element which stores it securely, storing only a "globally unique identifier" which allows the veterinarian's AVImark software to handle the recurring charges.
In its first four months, in fact, McAllister Payment Services signed up approximately 130 customers and projections are that those will grow to between 800 and 1,000 by the end of 2008. Much of the credit does to Element, whose dedication to customer service is "fanatical," says McAllister. "Their hand-holding through the integration process was phenomenal."
Download our interface specification document to learn more about integrating your application with the Element Express Processing Platform. And to learn more about PCI compliance and secure multiple installments, download our PCI Compliance Guide For Software Providers.