More and more people are electing to do their shopping — for anything — online. Every month, internet comparison shopping sites garner 72 million visitors, and it’s safe to say that many of them go on to make their final purchase somewhere online, too.

While we’ve come a long way in making online credit card payment solutions safe and efficient, there’s still more work to be done. In 2014, there were a recorded 1,540 data breaches that compromised a collective one billion records of data, a 46% increase from the previous year.

Make sure your customers feel safe when they’re making online purchases by guaranteeing them credit card payment processing services that provide the utmost security possible. Here are a few tips to bear in mind.

• Ask for all necessary information. That means address and CVV code, even if you’re not shipping a deliverable good. It can be more difficult to detect online credit card payment processing fraud because you can’t match a person’s face to their name. A thief may have a lot of stolen numbers, but if they can’t tell you all of their information, that’s a red flag to banks.
• Don’t ask for information in emails. No smart consumer would ever distribute their credit card information via email, and so you shouldn’t ask for it there, either. Only use https:// sites, rather than http://, to ensure that data entered is through a secure site.
• Keep records of everything. Every transaction, every shipment, every delivery. That probably sounds obvious to some merchants, but it’s an easy thing to slack on when things are going fine — and a real burden when they don’t. You can risk chargeback fees from credit card companies if customers start claiming something hasn’t arrived the way it should. The best way to protect yourself is to understand how payment gateways work.

Safe credit card payment solutions are smart credit card payment solutions. Don’t let yourself or your customers be vulnerable to theft, fraud, or plain broken systems that can lead to frustration. Stay on top of your payment processing for a happy online business.