SILVER SPRING, Md., April 16, 2012 - Merchant Link, a leading provider of payment gateway and data security solutions, today announced that it is developing an innovative e-commerce solution for merchants to process payments securely in card-not-present environments.

Working closely with industry-leading partners, Merchant Link will offer two options to secure e-commerce transactions and online payments:

• Hosted Solution: This option will enable a secure process to route sensitive cardholder data directly from the checkout page to the Merchant Link gateway while preserving the look and feel of the merchant website, enabling a seamless user experience.

• Encrypted Solution: This option will encrypt sensitive cardholder data at the moment of capture and prevent such data from being available to the e-commerce application or merchant.

Both options will significantly improve data security while reducing PCI scope and costs by blocking merchant access to cardholder data, the encryption and decryption environments, and to key management operations.

"This offering reflects our ongoing commitment to expand the breadth and depth of our services to provide merchants with all the options, security, support and flexibility they need when it comes to payments," said Dan Lane, Merchant Link's President and CEO.

The new solution is expected to be available by the end of the year.

About Merchant Link
Merchant Link is a leading provider of cloud-based payment gateway and data security solutions, removing the risk and hassle from credit card acceptance for more than 150,000 restaurants, retailers, and hotels. Founded in 1993 and headquartered in Silver Spring, Md., Merchant Link currently enables more than 3 billion transactions annually for some of the world's best-known merchants, providing connectivity to the major U.S. payment card processors. TransactionVault™, our tokenization solution, and TransactionShield®, our point-to-point encryption solution, mitigate the risk of a data compromise while lowering the cost and effort of PCI compliance. Further information is available at www.merchantlink.com. For our expert opinion on encryption, tokenization and PCI compliance, visit the Merchant Link blog at www.merchantlinksecuritycents.com.