Its primary objective is to enhance the control of cardholder data and reduce incidents of credit card fraud. To ensure compliance, validation is conducted either annually or quarterly, depending on the volume of transactions.

The core aim of these standards was largely uniform: to establish an additional layer of security, ensuring that merchants maintain a minimum level of security in the storage, processing, and transmission of cardholder data. Recognizing the need for harmonization among existing standards, major credit card organizations collaborated to introduce version 1.0 of the PCI DSS in December 2004.