How Should I Approach the Question of Asking for PCI Compliance Verification From Suppliers?

I am trying to set up an ecommerce store and am now at the point where I am seeking suppliers. Some of the potential suppliers I have found are asking for full credit card data (credit card number, card holder name (me), expiry date, and validation number. Obviously, in this world of hackers, putting that kind of information out there in the 'cyberspace' is a little scary and not something I would ever dream of doing with my personal credit card information.

However, I do need suppliers for the products I want to sell, so it seems to be a dilemma. I have posted this question before, and the answer I've gotten seems to be that ecommerce store owners solve the problem by only submitting their business credit card information to those suppliers who are PCI compliant, which means they have jumped through all of the hoops that the credit card industry and/or government deems necessary to store credit card information on their sites.

I guess that, after doing so, they are then certified to store such data, so all I have to do to insure my credit card's safety is to ask for proof of such certification...which brings me to my question: If you were in my shoes, how do I do this? How do I gain such validation that any potential supplier who is asking for my sensitive credit card data is actually certified? Is there a form for accomplishing this? Or do I just ask them for some kind of an account number that is stored by whoever grants such certification? If it's the later, who is that group? Is it a government agency or a non-governmental, industry-related group? And, finally, if I were to ask them for such certification, how would you word it, in order to be businesslike, yet not offensive?

Thank you for your time and trouble in helping me with this matter.

--Ray Cole