How AmericInn Ensures Data Security Using Tokenization and P2P Encryption

AmericInn, a nationally recognized mid-market hotelier with more than 200 hotels in 24 states, demonstrated thoughtful concern for its franchisee community and its guests in their search for a new, hosted payment data security solution to replace existing gateway solutions. With credit card data breaches continuing to make headlines, and PCI costs continuing to rise, the AmericInn team led by Mark Nicpon sought to establish a consistent, reliable and comprehensive solution to mitigate risk and reduce PCI scope across its hotel properties in North America.

The company’s large franchisee population used a variety of processors and the solution needed to take that into account. The goal was to process payment transactions securely for the franchisee community while interfacing seamlessly with the hotel’s property management system.

“Merchant Link was able to address the requirements set forth by AmericInn by providing a complete security solution including TransactionVault® and TransactionShield®, allowing them to maintain the integrity and functionality of their property management system while protecting guest data,” stated Christian McMahon, Senior Product Manager of Lodging Solutions at Merchant Link.

The Solution:

AmericInn began their search and due diligence in June, 2011. AmericInn and Merchant Link worked together through pilot testing in the fall and executed a contract to establish Merchant Link as the brand’s standard security solution for payment processing. After a year of evaluating solutions on the market, AmericInn selected Merchant Link’s security products as their go-forward brand strategy because of its superior security, reliability and attention to customer service.

The comprehensive data security solution – including The Merchant Link Payment Gateway™, TransactionVault® and TransactionShield® – was implemented across AmericInn franchisee properties. Having the security solution fully integrated with the brand’s existing property management solution not only reduced the time to acceptance within the franchisee community, it also addressed PCI compliance concerns. It further allowed franchisee owners to resume focus on their guests. Knowing that the hosted solution secures cardholder data from the moment of capture through to the end point and knowing that data is not stored anywhere on premise boosted the confidence of the AmericInn data security team and its franchisees.

AmericInn made the decision to recognize Merchant Link as its preferred provider of payment and data security services. Both the AmericInn and the Merchant Link technical teams worked together to establish business processes, build out a test environment and navigate the implementation process. Today, over 60% of the brand’s franchisee properties have converted to the Merchant Link solution with the balance of sites expected to complete conversion by August, 2013.

The Results:

By implementing the fully integrated, hosted security of TransactionVault® and TransactionShield®, AmericInn addressed its overall data security and PCI compliance concerns. “The Merchant Link Payment Gateway provides connectivity to all major processors and sends payments quickly, while detecting and correcting errors along the way. In addition, having TransactionVault® and TransactionShield® has allowed us to further reduce the risk of a breach or compromise for our franchisee community. By using Merchant Link data security solutions, our franchisees have reduced cost and PCI scope,” shared Mr. Nicpon.