PCI SSC brings North America meeting to Vancouver for 20th anniversary

The PCI Security Standards Council will hold its North America Community Meeting in Vancouver from Sept. 15-17, 2026, as AI-driven fraud and new payment risks reshape the industry. The event will bring banks, retailers, security firms and assessors together to discuss compliance, emerging threats and the future of payment security.

Why it matters: - AI is changing how payments are processed, attacked and defended. - The payment industry is facing new fraud and cybercrime risks that can scale faster than traditional defenses. - The Vancouver meeting is meant to help the North American payments community respond to those changes while protecting consumer trust.

What happened: - The PCI Security Standards Council will hold its North America Community Meeting in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, from 15-17 September 2026. - The event marks 20 years since PCI SSC was established in 2006 to set standards for protecting cardholder data. - The meeting theme is “Celebrating 20 Years of Progress – and Shaping the Future of Payment Security.” - The gathering will bring together banks, retailers, payment service providers, assessors, technology providers and security professionals from North America and beyond. - PCI SSC framed the event as a response to a payments ecosystem that is becoming faster, more automated and more interconnected.

The details: - Conference sessions will cover AI and compliance, emerging threats, PCI DSS implementation, continuous compliance, the gap between compliance and effective security, and the future of payments, trust and innovation. - The agenda also includes perspectives from cybersecurity experts and security architects on combating fraud and cybercrime at scale. - Pre-conference workshops are set for 15 September. - One workshop is titled “From Prompt to Payment: Attack Surfaces in Agentic Payment Flows.” - Another workshop is titled “Human versus AI Agent – Do PCI DSS requirements apply differently?” - The latter includes a dedicated Qualified Security Assessor-only session. - The full program will also address the payment infrastructure ecosystem, emerging attacks and global security management strategies. - Sharon Gai will headline the event as keynote speaker. - Gai is an AI expert, author and retail innovation leader who spent nearly a decade at Alibaba. - Gai now advises organizations across North America and beyond on innovation, AI adoption and resilience. - Her keynote is titled “The Future Consumer: Navigating the Age of Hyper-Personalization, AI, and Invisible Payments.” - The keynote will focus on agentic technologies, retail change and the next phase of modern commerce.

Between the lines: - The event underscores how AI has moved from a future issue to a present-day security concern for payments. - PCI SSC is using the 20th anniversary to push a message that compliance alone is not enough. - The workshop topics suggest the council expects agentic AI and invisible payments to create new questions for assessors and merchants. - Gina Gobeyn said the industry now faces a world where AI agents can initiate payments, navigate checkout flows and make financial decisions for consumers.

What's next: - Industry participants will meet in Vancouver in September to compare strategies and debate how standards should evolve. - The discussions are expected to inform how payments firms handle AI-enabled fraud, compliance and trust over the next several years. - PCI SSC plans to continue convening the community around the next phase of payment security.

The bottom line: - PCI SSC is turning its 20-year milestone into a forward-looking summit on AI, compliance and the future of secure payments. - More information is available on PCI SSC's LinkedIn page and PCI SSC on X.