News

Carlson Restaurants Worldwide Taps Merchant Link’s TransactionVault to Secure T.G.I. Friday’s Restaurants Credit Card Data

March 12, 2010 - T.G.I. Friday’s^®, one of the world’s most popular casual dining restaurant brands, provides its guests more than fabulous food and a great experience; it also serves an added measure of credit card data security with the recent installation of Merchant Link’s TransactionVault™ at more than 300 corporately owned locations nationwide.

T.G.I. Friday’s parent, Carlson Restaurants Worldwide, handling an estimated 17 million transactions on MICROS RES 4.3 POS systems, decided to move from a direct-to-processor model to a secure transaction gateway from Merchant Link, a provider of enterprise payment and security systems.

“We wanted to ensure that our guests could receive the highest level of commitment to the security and integrity of their sensitive and personal data,” said Don Vietti, senior vice president and chief information officer for Carlson Restaurants Worldwide. “TransactionVault offered what we needed from a technical standpoint, and more importantly, what we knew we wanted for our guests.”

Carlson Restaurants Worldwide uses Merchant Link’s TransactionVault, a tokenization technology to remove customer credit card data at the point of sale, where it is at risk from hackers and houses the information in Merchant Link’s secure “vault." With over 13,000 restaurants currently securing their customer’s information, TransactionVault also decreases the efforts needed to attain and maintain PCI compliance.

Merchant Link worked directly with MICROS to create a customized application layered on TransactionVault to interface with Carlson Restaurants Worldwide’s MICROS RES. Carlson Restaurants Worldwide has deployed Merchant Link’s full suite of reporting tools, including real time alerts for failed batching, duplicate batches or no settlement attempts.

Vietti added that once the TransactionVault installation is completed at the corporately owned T.G.I. Friday’s restaurants, Carlson Restaurants Worldwide is offering the solution to Carlson’s franchise community.

“Our franchisees are as committed as we are at the corporate level to our brand and reputation in the market,” said Vietti. “So I am confident they will immediately see the benefits Merchant Link and TransactionVault will offer.”

Carlson Restaurants Worldwide, parent company of T.G.I. Friday’s Inc., is a privately held company owned by Carlson. As of September 2009, Carlson Restaurants Worldwide operates, franchises and licenses more than 1,000 restaurants in 60 countries.

Merchant Link is a leading payments gateway company, providing PCI compliance, secure solutions, data transport services and comprehensive technology to merchants, software providers and credit card processors. Merchant Link currently supports more than 130,000 hotels, restaurants, ballparks and other venues, and maintains connectivity to the major U.S. payment card processors. Founded in 1993 and headquartered in Silver Spring, Md., Merchant Link handles more than 2 billion transactions for some of the world’s best-known merchants. Merchant Link's tokenization solution, TransactionVault™, removes the risk of data compromises and reduces a merchant's efforts to attain and maintain PCI compliance.

www.merchantlink.com
www.micros.com

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