WILBRAHAM Mass. Friendly Ice Cream Corp., based here, at 180 franchised Friendly's Ice Cream restaurants is using Merchant Link LLC's TransactionVault technology to protect customer identity and payment data.
Richard Del Valle, FICC director of restaurant technology, said the company and its franchisees "agree that one of our most important duties, after providing our customers with great food and terrific service, is to ensure the security of their identities and payment information." Added Del Valle, whose company operates or franchises to others 505 full-service Friendly's units nationwide: "With TransactionVault, Merchant Link is helping Friendly's do just that."
TransactionVault is a hosted service that encrypts and transmits credit transaction data to a remote, secure site, thereby eliminating the need to store customer identity or card data at the restaurant level where it might be stolen or hacked from afar. Officials of Silver Spring, Md.-based Merchant Link said the use of TransactionVault by Friendly's franchisees was in keeping with their efforts to comply with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards, or PCIDSS.