SAN FRANCISCO — Visa USA is reporting that retailers have made progress on securing the card data from computer thieves.

According to the number one card brand, 96% of the retail businesses which process more than one million Visa transactions per year and which account for approximately 66% of the brand's transaction volume have confirmed that they are not storing card data that they should not be keeping.

“We know that merchants that store full magnetic-stripe data expose themselves to risk exponentially,” said Michael Smith, senior vice president of Enterprise Risk and Compliance at Visa USA. “By removing prohibited data from their payment systems, large and small businesses alike are denying hackers the data they covet for use in counterfeiting payment cards and are thus making their businesses and the payments system more secure.” Smith also noted that ensuring that prohibited data is not retained is an important step toward achieving compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS).