Short answer
You do not need a shop that touches card data. To sell greeting cards and gifts online you need three things: a storefront, a payment processor that handles card details on your behalf, and a packing and shipping routine. Card numbers and verification codes should never reach your server, your inbox, or a paper notebook. If a supplier offers to sell you card data or a storefront built around it, walk away. That is stolen payment information, and buying or reselling it is a criminal offence in every market you would want to trade in.
Set up the shop
- Choose a hosted storefront platform that includes checkout, tax rules and shipping rates. Hosted means the platform owns the payment page, not you.
- Register a business name and open a business bank account. Processors ask for both before they approve a merchant account.
- Photograph each card or gift on a plain background and write a description that states size, material and what is printed inside.
- Set shipping bands by weight and destination, then test one order from a phone and one from a desktop before you open.
Take payments the safe way
Use a processor that redirects the buyer to its own checkout or drops an embedded form into your page. Card data goes straight to the processor and your site only receives a token and an approval code. Never ask a customer to email card numbers, and never store them. If you want to charge repeat buyers, store the processor's token, not the card.
Watch for card testing
Fraudsters test stolen numbers on small shops by placing many low value orders in a short burst. The pattern is easy to spot once you know it: several orders within minutes, different names on the same address, unusual email domains, and shipping to a freight forwarder. Turn on your processor's fraud rules, require the security code, and match the billing country to the shipping country. Refund and cancel anything that fails those checks before you print a label.
Price and ship physical goods
- Price cards at three to four times your landed cost, including envelope and rigid mailer.
- Send cards in rigid mailers, not soft envelopes, or corners arrive bent and you pay for replacements.
- Add tracked shipping as the default for orders above a set value and state the threshold in your shipping policy.
- Keep a stock sheet so a busy week does not turn into overselling and cancellations.
Handle a suspicious order
Do not ship it. Hold the order, email the buyer from your business address, and ask for a detail only the real cardholder would know, such as the name printed inside a personalised card. If the reply is vague or the address keeps changing, cancel, refund and report the attempt to your processor. Your processor's fraud team uses those reports to tighten the rules for every merchant on the network.