Eye on Point-of-Sale: Sound Payments POS Updates Are Issued; a New PCI Council Director

Sound Payments issued a slate of updates for its point-of-sale system, including a way for retailers to categorize returns.

Jacksonville, Fla.-based Sound Payments says the new return-categories feature enables merchants to catalog returns by size, reason for return, defective, and other custom variables. It also has a reporting component for return categories.

Other updates include the ability to categorize manually entered items, such as for a product not in the regular inventory, and a template to migrate customer, inventory, and transaction history from a prior POS system into the Sound Payments POS system. A payout report for up to two years and the ability to choose a printer after a sale, such as for a restaurant with multiple kitchens, also were added. Sound Payments also says it is adding multiple PAX Technology devices.

“We wanted to start the year with a number of enhancements to demonstrate our commitment to our resellers,” Andrew Russell, Sound Payments chief executive, says in a statement.

The PCI Security Standards Council has a new executive director. Gina Gobeyn joined the point-of-sale and online security standards body earlier this month following nearly 18 years at Discover Financial Services, most recently as chief risk management officer for its payment services. Prior to her time at Discover, Gobeyn was an information-security specialist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.

Gobeyn succeeds the retiring Lance Johnson, who joined the council in the same position in 2017. Prior to Johnson, Stephen W. Orfei was director. Orfei succeeded Bob Russo, the council’s original executive director.

Chief among her tasks will be shepherding the upcoming 4.0 version of the PCI Data Security Standard, set to go into effect March 31. That version replaces 3.2.1, which has been in effect since 2018. The latest update of the standard has 63 new requirements including updated firewall terminology and provisions to address increased flexibility for organizations to demonstrate how they are using different methods to achieve security objectives.

After March 31, 2025, compliance with the 4.0 version will be required.