Hands up who hasn't bought something over the internet?

Online shopping is becoming the norm for many consumers and businesses (recent research from BCG predicts growth in UK online sales of 11% per annum to 2016) and we only have to look at the success of companies like Vistaprint, Moonpig and Moo to see the exciting potential for print, be it a consumer-facing or trade service.

Paul Zwillenberg, a BCG partner and co-author of the report, says: "Around the world, SMEs that embrace the internet are growing faster and adding more jobs than those that don't."

Opportunity knocks, and this makes our recent report on online payment methods all the more timely.

I found it a really interesting piece as the importance of choosing the right payment partner resonated with a recent personal experience of the less-than-ideal variety.

Last autumn someone made a number of fraudulent transactions using my credit card. At the time I was completely mystified about how this could have happened. Speaking to my card provider they asked if I had bought anything over the internet recently. The answer was yes of course, but I thought I was only dealing with reputable retailers as opposed to the sort of random website that could be run by anyone from anywhere.

The mists cleared when an email arrived a few days later entitled "Important message regarding payment card details on Guardian Reader Offers", fessing up that "a small number" of customers had had fraudulent transactions made on their cards as a result of using the site.

I had indeed bought something from this part of the Guardian site, and things had obviously gone very badly wrong with the systems at the company that hosts and maintains that service for the newspaper.

I was (and remain) bloody furious about this, as the fraudsters must have had ALL my details in order to make the purchases they did, and my understanding was that this information wasn't supposed to reside in the same place as part of the data security regulations.

Suffice to say I will never buy anything from the Guardian again. And I can only imagine what this breach has done to the relationship between the Guardian and their supplier (even today, some six months on, ordering items from this part of the site has to be done by phone).

Imagine what this would do to a printco's reputation if they were providing a third-party 'print shop' for a client and this sort of incident happened?

So, dear reader, when venturing into the exciting world of online commerce, do be careful to pick the right payment partner and make sure all those data security bases really are covered.