>I am not trying to be Mr. Gloom and Doom. I just work for a credit card payment processor and deal with this stuff every day. My guess is 95% of the merchants out there don't understand the gravity of the new rules.

Well 95% of business are not compliant and my guess that Visa/Mastercard isn't going after these businesses if they plan on keeping their cash cow that is processing fees.

Compliancy would basically disqualify 90% of merchants from ever taking credit cards because true compliance is ridiculously complex and prohibitively expensive.

No doubt though security is important REGARDLESS of the Visa/MC rules. <s>

But it's just another one of those things that banks rammed through congress screwing the consumer and merchants in favor of the big banks.