University of Georgia Implements Point-to-Point Encryption from Merchant Link for On-Campus Hotel

SILVER SPRING, Md., June 20, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- The Georgia Center, a conference center and hotel with 200 rooms and suites on the campus of the University of Georgia (UGA), will be providing a more restful night's stay for their guests moving forward. That's because the Georgia Center is working with Merchant Link to install the company's TransactionShield™ point-to-point encryption solution to ensure that customer data is secure from the moment their credit card is swiped.

"We have always sought to be aggressive when it comes to our approach to data security," said Corey Doster, the IT Director at the Georgia Center.  "Merchant Link solutions help us meet and exceed our PCI compliance requirements while removing the customer data completely from our premises.  The addition of TransactionShield provides another layer of security to protect our faculty, staff, students and campus visitors against theft and misuse."

The Georgia Center, which serves over 42,000 guests every year, has been a longtime customer of the Merchant Link Payment Gateway™ since August 2006. The conference center and hotel also deployed Merchant Link's TransactionVault™ tokenization solution last year with significant success. By combining the two solutions, the Georgia Center removed sensitive data completely from their systems.

The recent addition of the TransactionShield point-to-point encryption solution will extend the protection of customer data from the moment the credit card is swiped and as data travels through UGA's IT environment to the Merchant Link network. New credit card readers immediately encrypt credit card data and decryption does not occur until it reaches Merchant Link's cloud-based payment gateway. Once authorization is received, data is sent back to UGA's Micros OPERA Property Management System in the form of a token.

The implementation of TransactionShield at the Georgia Center is Merchant Link's first point-to-point encryption installation. Following the successful implementation at the Georgia Center, Merchant Link expects to rapidly deploy the solution to other hotel, restaurant and retail merchants around the country.

About the Georgia Center

The Georgia Center, the University of Georgia's Conference Center and Hotel, is located on the beautiful, historic campus of UGA in Athens, Georgia. The Center includes a 200-room hotel, four onsite dining options, banquet areas, conference rooms, auditoriums, a fitness center, and a computer lab — all under one roof.

For additional information, go to http://www.georgiacenter.uga.edu.

About Merchant Link

Merchant Link is a leading provider of cloud-based payment gateway and data security solutions, removing the risk and hassle from credit card acceptance for more than 150,000 hotel, restaurant and retailers. Founded in 1993 and headquartered in Silver Spring, Md., Merchant Link currently enables more than 3 billion transactions annually for some of the world's best-known merchants, providing connectivity to the major U.S. payment card processors. TransactionVault™, our tokenization solution, and TransactionShield™, our point-to-point encryption solution, mitigate the risk of a data compromise while lowering the cost and effort of PCI compliance. Further information is available at www.merchantlink.com. For our expert opinion on encryption, tokenization and PCI compliance, visit the Merchant Link blog at www.merchantlinksecuritycents.com.

Media Contacts:  
Shany Seawright, 240-485-1081
[email protected]

SOURCE Merchant Link