It’s easy to forget that despite the growing number of online sales, secure payment processing services and credit card payment systems shouldn’t just be considered an asset in a business — businesses need to see these systems as absolutely necessities for card not present transactions. In order to understand the real importance of your credit card payment system, take a look at the following numbers and see why payment processing security is so essential in e-commerce:

30 seconds: The amount of time it takes, on average, for American businesses to generate about $1.2 million in online sales.

$370 billion: The estimated amount of revenue that American consumers will spend online by the year 2017.

$52 billion to $140 billion: The amount of money generated by mobile e-commerce sales in 2015, compared to the amount that mobile sales are expected to generate by 2019. In just a few short years, mobile sales are likely to comprise a huge portion of online sales in the U.S.

4 or more: The number of credit cards that a third of all American families own, according to a 2010. In many cases, households may have more than a dozen different types of payment cards.

$4.6 trillion: The amount of money that American consumers spent using credit and debit cards in 2013 (taken from the total amount of consumer payments in the U.S., which was $8.6 trillion in that year). Regardless of whether the transactions are made in person or in a card not present environment, it’s clear that credit and debit cards are necessities for consumers today.

So what do you think? Are credit card payment systems secure enough to manage this increase in virtual payments, or do businesses need to step up their game and bring some extra security protocols into the mix? If you own a small business yourself, what does your business do to make sure every transaction is safe and secure?