CyberSource Corp.

There's an old saying quoted at the beginning of each entry in Michael Apted's critically acclaimed "Up" documentary series, which checks in on the lives of 14 individuals every seven years: "Show me the child until the age of seven and I will show you the man." It just happens that both e-commerce and Bitcoin are celebrating similar divisible-by-seven anniversary milestones this year, giving us reason to reflect on their beginnings and anticipate where they'll be seven years from now.

Local retailers face an uphill battle when competing against national brands. They simply don't have the money that the big guys do to spend on best-in-class marketing and business technology. In the last couple of years, however, many companies have started developing technology for small retailers that was once only available to large chains. Innovation in consumer financing technologies, payment card acceptance, e-commerce fraud prevention and loyalty marketing services is helping small businesses take on their larger counterparts.

It's estimated that small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) lose upwards of $66,000 annually through fraud. An increased awareness of fraud among large merchants has forced fraudsters — those individuals who perpetrate crimes against retailers — to switch their attention to small businesses that provide an easier target because of the lack of safeguards they have in place.

Nearly 70 percent of e-commerce merchants said they've tightened credit card data security in order to protect their brand, not to avoid fines for non-compliance with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, according to a survey by Visa’s CyberSource unit and Trustwave.

Findings from a new survey of e-commerce merchants released by CyberSource show that nearly 70 percent of respondents cited the need to "protect the brand" as the primary driver for tightening controls against hackers and other payment security risks.

Online fraud will account for more lost revenue than ever before in the decade-plus history of e-commerce. Online merchants expect to lose a record $4 billion to fraud in 2008, up from $3.7 billion last year, according to a recent survey from CyberSource, a provider of electronic payment and risk management solutions. The survey of 400 online retailers was conducted from Oct. 21 to Nov. 11. Here are some more findings of the survey: