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.

Merchant ID

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.

PCI Compliance

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 and a data security standard was developed.  Vanderbilt’s PCI Compliance Office is tasked with helping Vanderbilt merchants become and remain compliant.

For all questions related to Credit Card Merchant Services, please contact pcicompliance@vanderbilt.edu.