There is no good answer when dealing with credit cards. I wrote and then revised this article after being burnt several times...
Credit Card Chargeback Information for Small Businesses
Here's my take - If you are a retail store with 100's of prospective clients then use the credit card system. You should probably build into your cost or goods sold a standard up charge for fraud. It's going to happen so treat it as a price of doing business.
In my case I do smaller quantities of larger orders. So even though we do take credit cards we typically invoice everyone and put all of our clients on net 30 day terms. In other words I want a check or a wire transfer. This form of payments works for me but you have to be able to carry companies for 30 to 60 days.