Sunday, September 30th was the deadline for the 327 Level 1 merchants to demonstrate PCI Compliance. Businesses that process more than 6 million annual Visa transactions are considered Level 1 merchants. Visa reports that 44% of those merchants were compliant as of August 31st. The remaining 177 Level 1 merchants had submitted plans but were working on remediation prior to gaining official compliance. Visa had instituted two types of penalties for merchants who did not meet the deadline. First was higher interchange fees and second was monthly fines up to $25,000 per month until compliance was achieved.