Bank of America PCI fee

[lalajane]

Does anyone use Bank of America Merchant Services? My husband is considering using them for a cafe he is opening and we can't get any details on what their $94.95 a year PCI fee includes. Our merchant services contact is a bit clueless - I keep telling him I understand what PCI is and what is required for compliance and validation, but I can't get out of him what we get for $94.95 a year. I'm a QSA and have access to an ASV for a good rate on a scan, so what do I need to pay $94.95 a year for?

Thanks

Jane L.

[jbhall56]

This is the first I have heard of a "PCI fee" from BAMS so this is just an educated guess. My guess is that it's a fee to support BAMS' PCI Compliance group's efforts to handle all of the Reports On Compliance (ROC) and Self-Assessment Questionnaires (SAQ) plus all of the follow up and remediation as well as the reporting back to Visa.

In the end, the PCI fee does nothing for the merchant, it's all about recovering the cost of managing the PCI compliance process.

[lalajane]

That's what I figured. It just irks me that they can't tell us what the fee includes. They have offered to waive the fee, so that seems to further support that they are just trying to recoup their costs for collecting SAQ and scan results. They don't require level 4 merchants to provide an SAQ or scan report (for now), so that makes me even more annoyed that they would ask a level 4 merchant to pay a fee to cover their costs for the other level 1-3 merchants.

If I find anything else out about the fee, I'll pass it along.

Thanks

Jane L.