Tomer Barel, Chief Risk Officer, PayPal

As the first month of 2015 comes to a close, you may be debating whether or not to continue with your New Year’s resolutions. Perhaps you have already decided to stick out your new goal or haven’t even made one yet. One resolution worth adding to your list and keeping all year-around is ensuring that your financial information is protected.

According to the Identity Theft Resource Center, there were 783 reported security and data breaches that took place in 2014, putting more than 82 million consumers and even more businesses at risk. Of those 783 breaches, 43 of them were banking or credit related, compromising the financial information of more than 1.1 million individuals.   

Although most major corporations, financial institutions and retailers have made payment security their top priority, consumers still need to arm themselves with the most up-to-date payment protection information. This is why PayPal proposes a resolution to protect your financial information year-round.

Here are three tips to leading a lifetime of financial security:

Embrace the Mobile Wallet. Not only does the mobile wallet allow you to lighten your pockets when you leave home, it also gives you peace of mind when making transactions. PayPal offers one of the safest, leading global digital wallets to its consumers, where all transactions are monitored around the clock and protected by next-level encryption. And because PayPal is device agnostic, it can be used with Android, Blackberry and iPhone devices, making it easy for anyone, almost anywhere, to securely make payments using their mobile phones.

Protect Your Devices with a Password. With the number of mobile transactions increasing, so should the security we use to protect the financial information stored on our smart devices. And while mobile wallets offer higher security, we are still vulnerable to theft or loss of mobile devices. The easiest solution in protecting your phone and its precious content is to create a passcode that locks anyone out who doesn’t know it. All the leading smartphones contain this passcode feature – some even have fingerprint ID technology – and it takes less than 5 minutes to set up.

Opt for Safer Payment Methods. When making an online purchase, people often worry about the risks of sharing their credit card information and forget that there are other payment options. PayPal is a secure alternative to paying online or in-store with credit or debit cards. The service is offered as a payment option at millions of popular websites.

Finally, it’s always important to make sure the website you’re shopping on is secure. An easy way to check the security of the site is to take a look at the website’s URL. URLs always start with a Hypertext Transfer Protocol, or HTTP. An “S” at the end—“HTTPS”—stands for “secure,” and indicates that the website has an extra layer of security capabilities, allowing for the secure communication of payment information. You can also find a padlock icon in front of the URL to indicate the website is secure.

While this may seem like a lot to consider when just trying to make a simple purchase, it’s important to remember that the security of your financial information is worth it. In the spirit of the New Year, and the Lunar New Year beginning February 19th, now is a better time than any to embrace these changes and continuously take the steps to lead a long, more secure, tech-savvy life.