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Credit Card Merchant Services

Treasury partners with Business Services and Information Technology at Vanderbilt to enable the university’s schools and departments to accept credit card payments for products and services in a safe, secure manner. Elavon, Inc. is the university’s current credit card payment processor for the majority of the university’s card transactions.

In order for a department at Vanderbilt to accept credit cards they must have a merchant ID account (MID). Setting up a new merchant account is a collaborative effort between the department, Treasury, PCI Compliance, and in some cases, VUIT. The merchant account is a bank account, and will ultimately deposit funds into the university’s operating account via Vanderbilt’s merchant card processor. At Vanderbilt University, all bank accounts are controlled by Treasury. Due to the banking relationship, Treasury must set up the new account for the requesting department, but the department must FIRST complete a Request to Process Credit Cards form, which is located under the Merchants dropdown, on the PCI Compliance (PCIO) website.  Once the form has been approved, Treasury will create the account, and then inform the department and PCI Compliance Office when complete. 

In 2006 the credit card brands decided to band together to create one set of data security standards instead of requiring a merchant to follow a different set of standards for each credit card brand (i.e. Visa, MasterCard, American Express, etc.)  The PCI Security Council was formed Official PCI Security Standards Council Site and a data security standard was developed.  Vanderbilt’s PCI Compliance Office is tasked with helping Vanderbilt merchants become and remain compliant.  Security is an ongoing process so the merchant is in frequent contact with the PCIO.

Treasury will set up a new merchant account for the department, but we must be confident that the proposed method you plan to use to accept credit cards will be PCI compliant.  Please visit the PCI Compliance website for further information and for the “Request to Process Credit Cards” form.