The greatest benefit of payment card data security standards is that they drive consistent, industry-wide protection of information assets (A). CISM governance emphasizes that standards such as those for payment cards establish minimum baselines that improve security maturity across the entire ecosystem. They do not eliminate attacks (B), optimize budgets (C), or directly enable new payment methods (D). Instead, they raise the overall level of protection, reduce systemic risk, and support trust in payment systems by ensuring consistent application of fundamental security controls.