MANAMA: Arab Financial Services (AFS) has achieved PCI-DSS compliancy certificate, the payment card industry data security standard.
AFS, which offers electronic payments and consumer finance outsourcing services, claims to be the first organisation in the region to achieve the standard.
"This new status demonstrates AFS's commitment to enhancing the services we provide for our customers and our commitment to payment card data protection and security," said AFS chief executive officer Shankar Sharma.
"AFS is a leader in its field and this achievement adds strength to our vision of becoming the most trusted and respected provider of electronic payment and consumer lending outsourcing services."
Last year, AFS joined the PCI Security Standards Council as a participating organisation.
This ensured AFS was part of the process to evolve the PCI DSS and other payment card protection standards, falling under Level 1 which denotes any member that stores, processes or transmits more than 600,000 Visa transactions annually.
Achieving compliant status has taken their involvement with the council to the next level.
"Through our involvement with the PCI Security Standards Council, we encourage banks and financial institutions to become compliant to ensure data protection for the end user," Mr Sharma added.
"Earlier this year AFS hosted, under the patronage of the Central Bank of Bahrain, a seminar on PCI DSS to help raise the awareness of the standard to all relevant organisations.
AFS remains at the forefront of the industry setting best business practices which other organisations and financial institutions around the region can benefit from."
The process of compliancy has taken a year to complete with a dedicated team at AFS working through all the steps required to achieve the final requirements.
"It has taken a significant investment and a huge amount of effort from everyone at AFS to ensure we achieved each part of the required process," said AFS project manager Jawad Al Alawi.
"Changing the processes and the way people work has been the most challenging aspect of the project. All the team has worked really hard to get to where we are today, PCI-DSS compliant."
