The payment card industry is the group of businesses involved in issuing, accepting and processing credit, debit and prepaid cards: the card schemes, issuing banks, acquirers, processors, gateways, terminal makers and the merchants that take cards. In everyday use the initials PCI rarely mean the industry itself. They are shorthand for its security standards and for the body that writes them, the PCI Security Standards Council.
The council was founded in 2006 by American Express, Discover, JCB, Mastercard and Visa to replace their separate security programmes with common requirements. Its best-known publication is the PCI DSS, which applies to any organisation that stores, processes or transmits card data. Others cover PCI PIN security, payment terminals, payment software and point-to-point encryption. The council sets the standards but does not enforce them. Enforcement, including the validation required at each PCI level, belongs to the card brands and acquirers, as described under PCI compliance.