Leading ethical debt purchase and collection company, 1st Credit Limited, has completed the roll-out of GCI’s Live Agent to ensure it meets stringent Payment Card Industry (PCI) regulations within its contact centre environment. The completion of this project simplifies 1stCredit’s PCI compliance requirements by enabling customer support representatives to take telephone payments without any sensitive cardholder data entering their environment.

 “We are a heavily compliance-led business so it was essential that we dealt with the issue of PCI Data Security Standard (DSS)” said Operations Director, Rob Lemon. “However, like many businesses in our sector, we grew increasingly aware of the mounting costs and resource needed to maintain compliance. Much of our issue was down to us handling card data through our systems and processes. This pushed us to look at ways of completely removing the risk posed by taking payments over the phone by not allowing the data into our business”.

 1st Credit is a leader in its sector having won ‘best conduct and compliance culture’ and ‘best customer service’ 2016 in the prestigious Collections and Customer Service Awards 2016. It undertook a review of multiple technologies to find a best fit for their business. “When we evaluated our options, GCI presented us with a very smart and easy to use application which integrated into our Noble Systems dialler platform and Verifone payment gateway.”

 GCI were shortlisted and subsequently awarded the contract to deploy Live Agent, a DTMF- driven payment application. DTMF uses standard ‘touchtone’ technology and allows customers to complete a transaction during a call simply by pressing keys on the phone pad and without the customer support representative seeing or hearing card details.

 Brad Semp, Director of PCI Services at GCI, said: “We are delighted to have enabled 1st Credit to achieve the highest possible level of PCI DSS de-scope, with the rollout of our flagship Live Agent application. This means absolute piece of mind for 1st Credit, their clients and customers”. Semp continued, “Working with Rob and the team at 1st Credit has been an excellent experience. They have a desire to not just adhere to mandatory regulations but to go above and beyond, ensuring their customer journey is exemplary and that their data remains secure at all times”.

 Live Agent is one of a number of GCI managed services which 1st Credit has deployed. “GCI works with a number of other businesses in our sector so we had the comfort of knowing that they understood our market and our requirements. We are pleased to have added Live Agent to the resilient voice and business continuity services we already have with GCI”, said Rob Lemon.