Merchants jump on Visa's free security service

Enterprises conducting e-commerce transactions have been quick to take up Visa's free, hosted security auditing service, according to the company.

Edward Lodens, Visa's head of third-party assurance, said the take up since its launch in August has been good with "a lot of merchants" joining the program.

"It breaks down barriers to security [which] can be seen as a large cost to business," Lodens, who did not reveal the exact number of participants, said. "They can take best practice and validate their compliance."

According to Visa, the free service, which uses a US vendor but is available across the Asia-Pacific, will be provided "indefinitely" at this point to all merchants that accept Visa cards for payment of goods and services.