Card payments are simple for customers, but accepting them takes considerably more work for businesses. Any business that handles card payments is required to maintain PCI compliance, yet only 14.3% of organizations managed to in 2023. Meeting every requirement of the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is a serious challenge. Compliance can mean anything from filling out a short questionnaire to funding enterprise-level security programs. For many teams, the important question is how much it will cost to do it right—and what happens if they fall short.

Below, we’ll explain what PCI compliance means, what drives its costs, and what’s at stake for businesses.

What’s in this article?

• What is PCI compliance and why does it matter for businesses that handle payments?
  
• How much does PCI compliance cost for small, midsize, and large businesses?
  
• What factors affect the cost of PCI compliance?
  
• How do technology and security upgrades impact PCI compliance costs?
  
• What are the hidden or unexpected costs of PCI compliance?
  
• What are the financial risks of not being PCI compliant?
  
• How Stripe Payments can help
  

What is PCI compliance and why does it matter for businesses that handle payments?

The PCI DSS is a framework created by major card networks to protect customers’ financial information and reduce fraud risk worldwide. It has 12 core requirements that range from encrypting card data and maintaining secure networks to monitoring systems and training employees. PCI compliance means meeting those requirements. This is the global security baseline for any business that accepts, processes, or stores credit card data. Every business that handles payment cards, whether it’s a one-person ecommerce shop or a multinational platform, must abide by the PCI DSS.

Card networks require compliance, but compliance helps businesses prevent breaches and avoid costly penalties. It also strengthens your reputation with banks, partners, and customers. The same security controls that keep you compliant (e.g., encryption, monitoring, access controls) can prevent downtime, fraud, and regulatory issues later on.

How much does PCI compliance cost for small, midsize, and large businesses?

The cost of PCI compliance varies depending on how big your business is, how complex your payment systems are, and how close you are to meeting the standard.

Here’s what that looks like in practice:

• Small businesses: These companies will need to complete a Self-Assessment Questionnaire (SAQ), use approved scanning services, and keep systems up-to-date. Some payment processors charge a small annual PCI fee, but overall costs are low and predictable. All of this typically costs $1,000–$10,000 per year.

• Midsize companies: Costs often include quarterly vulnerability scans, annual penetration tests, occasional consulting help, and staff training. These businesses might also need to upgrade or segment networks to limit where card data lives and keep the compliance scope manageable. They’ll usually pay about $10,000–$50,000 per year.

• Large enterprises: These companies face full-scale compliance programs that include annual audits by Qualified Security Assessors (QSAs), enterprise-grade security and monitoring tools, encryption solutions, and dedicated personnel. Some also plan for remediation work each year to fix issues revealed by audits, which can add to the total. The costs start at about $50,000 and can be as high as $250,000 per year.

Across businesses of all sizes, these figures reflect the cost of staying proactive about compliance. When businesses delay updates, overlook routine checks, or experience a data breach, costs can climb quickly. PCI compliance should be seen as an ongoing investment, since regular upkeep usually costs less than cleaning up after a crisis.

What factors affect the cost of PCI compliance?

In addition to the size of your business, other factors that affect PCI compliance costs include scale, scope, and control. The more card data your systems handle directly, the more complicated (and expensive) your path to compliance becomes.

Here are the main factors that impact how much you’ll pay:

• Business size and transaction volume: The PCI Security Standards Council classifies companies based on their annual transaction volumes, from Level 1 (over 6 million) to Level 4 (fewer than 20,000). Larger volumes require more validation, usually a full audit by a QSA.

• Systems for card data: The broader your cardholder data environment is, the more expensive compliance becomes. Simplifying your data flows or using tokenization can substantially lower your compliance footprint and costs.

• Security infrastructure: Companies with well-established security practices (e.g., strong firewalls, encryption, access controls) often find that meeting PCI DSS requirements is faster and less costly than expected in the first year. Businesses that start from scratch generally need to invest in new systems, vulnerability scanning, and patching tools before they can even begin an audit.

• Assessment and validation: Every business must prove compliance annually. Smaller businesses complete an SAQ, which costs at least $300, while larger organizations require a formal Report on Compliance (ROC) from a QSA. Internal labor often accounts for a substantial portion of total PCI expenses.

• Training and maintenance: Ongoing education and system upkeep are part of the total cost. Companies typically spend $50–$100 per employee on training, plus recurring costs for quarterly vulnerability scans and annual penetration tests.

• Use of third-party providers: Outsourcing payment processing to a PCI Level 1 platform like Stripe removes many of the costly requirements for storing or securing card data. Businesses that use tokenized or hosted payment systems can decrease audit scope and annual compliance costs considerably.

How do technology and security upgrades impact PCI compliance costs?

Technology upgrades are often the biggest single investment in PCI compliance. They’re expensive up front, but they protect your organization against data loss, fraud, and downtime.

Here’s a breakdown of those costs:

• Network and infrastructure: Meeting PCI DSS requirements frequently means replacing older or consumer-grade gear with enterprise-grade firewalls, routers, and network segmentation tools. For a small business, that might cost a few thousand dollars. For large organizations with multiple environments, it costs substantially more to upgrade hardware, licenses, and configuration.

• Encryption and data protection: Storing or transmitting card data demands strong encryption or, ideally, tokenization. Deploying encryption at rest or a key management system can cost between a few thousand and tens of thousands of dollars annually. Tokenized payments, which prevent sensitive data from touching your servers, can greatly reduce your PCI compliance scope.

• Secure payment systems and devices: In-person businesses often upgrade to PCI-validated point-of-sale (POS) systems or encrypted readers. These devices generally cost a few hundred dollars each, but the costs of replacing outdated hardware across multiple locations can quickly add up.

• Monitoring, logging, and intrusion detection: The PCI DSS requires continuous monitoring and logging for systems that handle card data. Implementing a security information and event management (SIEM) system or managed log service can cost $10,000–$100,000. These systems are important for early detection and compliance proof.

• System security and patching tools: Automated patch management and endpoint protection tools help maintain compliance. Licenses typically cost a modest amount per device each year. And while the cost scales quickly in large organizations, it’s far less than the price of a breach.

What are the hidden or unexpected costs of PCI compliance?

Even well-prepared businesses encounter unexpected costs when they pursue PCI compliance. There’s a significant amount of hidden labor involved in process changes, system upgrades, and scope assessments, and these costs can take more time and money away from your organization.

The biggest unexpected costs usually include the following:

• Internal time and labor: Internal time and labor are often the biggest hidden expenses. Preparing for audits, collecting evidence, and resolving findings can take weeks of focused work across teams. That adds major productivity costs for midsize and large organizations.

• Third-party dependencies: Compliance doesn’t stop at your firewall. You’re responsible for any vendor that touches card data, including cloud hosts, payment gateways, marketing tools, and even call centers. Sometimes, a vendor’s system or process fails to follow PCI rules, which forces you to switch providers or upgrade to a higher (and more expensive) tier to stay compliant.

• Unplanned system upgrades: Outdated call-recording software, unsupported operating systems, or older POS devices might need immediate replacement. These unbudgeted upgrades can turn into five-figure projects, especially for businesses that are running legacy infrastructure.

• Operational slowdowns: Compliance sometimes introduces new checkpoints, such as stricter access approvals and required change reviews, that can slow down everyday workflows. Integrating compliance into normal operations early helps minimize that drag.

• Inefficient scoping: Overdoing compliance can be as costly as underdoing it. If you include systems in your PCI scope that don’t need to be there (e.g., applying controls to environments without cardholders), you’ll spend more than necessary. Smart network segmentation and tokenization can help reduce scope and costs.

• Opportunity cost: Compliance projects pull skilled staff away for weeks of documentation, testing, and remediation. That’s time that could be spent on revenue-generating work or product improvements. Many companies underestimate how much attention PCI compliance will command from engineering, operations, and legal teams.

• Processor and acquirer fees: Some payment processors charge ongoing “PCI compliance” or “noncompliance” fees. These are usually small, but they add up, especially if you operate across multiple accounts or regions.

What are the financial risks of not being PCI compliant?

Compliance might feel like overhead, but it’s an effective form of financial risk management to invest in. The financial fallout from noncompliance includes fines, breach expenses, and lost business trust.

Noncompliance can lead to:

• Fines and penalties: Payment networks and acquiring banks can impose serious penalties for PCI violations, from $500–$500,000. If a data breach occurs, those fines can rise to hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending on the number of affected cardholders.

• Breach investigation and remediation costs: After a breach, you’re required to hire a PCI Forensic Investigator to determine what happened. That process alone can cost $8,000–$100,000. Add card replacement costs, and your direct response costs can easily reach six figures.

• Legal exposure and settlements: Data breaches often trigger lawsuits or regulatory investigations. Legal defense, settlements, and customer remediation (e.g., credit monitoring) can push total incident costs well into the millions. The average global cost of a data breach was $4.4 million in 2025.

• Loss of processing privileges: If a business is deemed high-risk after a breach, its acquiring bank or processor can suspend or terminate card processing altogether. Losing the ability to accept credit card payments even temporarily can be devastating for cash flow and customer relationships.

• Reputational damage: While financial penalties can be recovered, reputational damage takes longer to fix. The cost of rebuilding that trust is hard to quantify but often greater than the direct financial hit.

• Insurance and contract implications: Noncompliance can void cyberinsurance coverage or trigger clauses in partner contracts that transfer liability back to you. Even if insurance does cover some costs, premiums are likely to peak after a major incident.

How Stripe Payments can help

Stripe Payments provides a unified, global payment solution that helps any business—from scaling startups to global enterprises—accept payments online, in person, and around the world.

Stripe Payments can help you:

• Optimize your checkout experience: Create a frictionless customer experience and save thousands of engineering hours with prebuilt payment UIs, access to 125+ payment methods, and Link, a wallet built by Stripe.

• Expand to new markets faster: Reach customers worldwide and reduce the complexity and cost of multicurrency management with cross-border payment options, available in 195 countries across 135+ currencies.

• Unify payments in person and online: Build a unified commerce experience across online and in-person channels to personalize interactions, reward loyalty, and grow revenue.

• Improve payment performance: Increase revenue with a range of customizable, easy-to-configure payment tools, including no-code fraud protection and advanced capabilities to improve authorization rates.

• Move faster with a flexible, reliable platform for growth: Build on a platform designed to scale with you, with 99.999% uptime and industry-leading reliability.

Learn more about how Stripe Payments can power your online and in-person payments, or get started today.