Businesses which accept customer payments by credit card must heed recent warnings about the dangers of printing bank details on receipts if they want to avoid the risk of penalties for non-compliance with the card regulations.

Carl Ceilam, a senior manager with Ernst & Young’s advisory team, has pointed out that in addition to having to adhere to the Island’s data protection legislation, those authorising card transactions are governed by a global regulation called the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard.

Organisation which fail to comply with the standard can face fines and sanctions from major card issuers such as Visa and Mastercard.

Mr Ceilam said: ‘This is not just a retail issue. All businesses must recognise that they have a duty to ensure that customers’ information is protected by limiting the data printed on receipts.

‘Although the regulations do not specifically disallow specific information being printed, they do require that the consumer is fully protected against issues such as identity theft.’