One company asks for picture of my debit card
Although it is strange, there is little risk. The first four numbers are just the card type (Visa, Master, etc.), and the last four alone don't give them much - there are still 8 digits missing that they do not have. There is nothing much they can do with that info, especially without the PIN and the CCV, so as I said, little risk. Maybe they are using this to verify that you are the right person - you probably used that card originally to put money in for the gaming. That would be a way for them to authenticate you. Sounds questionable to me. If there is no way around this I would suggest opening a new account with only the minimum balance necessary and sending them the debit card associated with that account. If anything goes wrong then the amount of damage they can do will be limited. I would definitely be looking for other options though. Maybe they can just mail you a check or something? I don't see a way that this would make matters worse than just giving them the credit card info... Except that it would make abusing the card easier at some other site (or the bank) if they have a similar (unreasonably weak) security-by-photo test. Still, I'd strongly recommend you use a separate card for this so you can cancel it without disrupting your other credit card uses.  (Actually I'd strongly recommend not doing business with folks who have already demonstrated questionable ethics, but you seem to have made that decision.) Believe it or not, what they're asking you is not as unusual as you might think.  Our company sells a tremendous amount of expensive merchandise over the Internet, and whenever there's something odd or suspicious about the transaction, we may ask the customer to provide a picture of the card simply to prove they have physical possession of it.  This is more reassurance to us (to the extent that's possible) that the customer isn't using a stolen card number to order stuff.   It doesn't help too much, but if the charge is disputed, at least we have something to show we made reasonable efforts to verify the ownership of the card.   I think it's pretty thin, but that's what my employer does.
There are different ways of credit card purchase authorizations. if some choose less secure method it's their problem. Merchants are charged back if a stolen card is used. "The service processors are providing is absorbing the risk.  The flow goes, roughly (and I say roughly because it's a complicated process):  1. You swipe/insert your card at Bob's House of Eatery and get charged $10 for a bucket of ramen or something. 2. The device you swipe your card in, (""a terminal"") encodes the card number, amount, and some other transaction details and contacts a ""Payment Gateway"".   3. The gateway decodes the blob of data, and is responsible for determining the issuing financial institution (""Chase"", ""US Bank"", etc.). 4. The gateway contacts the above and asks, ""Can card # 555.. charge $10?"" 5. The gateway also sends this answer to the processor.   5. The processor _immediately_ proxies that yes/no back to the merchant's terminal. 6. The processor, having a transaction ID, and a yes/no, sends the response to the merchant's systems so your receipt can be printed or order processed, and so on.   7. Meanwhile, the processor has a transaction ID and is busy figuring out things like interchange fees.  The amount depends on a whole host of things, and almost everyone involved in the process wants their cut -- the bank, the gateway, the processor, and it all depends on the type of card, customer, rewards, and so on.   8. At the end of the day, week, whatever, the processor collects money from the issuing financial institution and is responsible for giving the right amount -- less fees -- to the merchant.    The processor here also absorbs the risk and costs for things like chargebacks, as almost everyone in that chain (gateway, issuing bank) want their pound of flesh for a chargeback, and often the processor doesn't pass that full cost on to the merchant and instead does some risk analysis to determine if they think this merchant is going to be okay to do business with.    That's what you're paying for." Is there a debit card accessing this account?  When you spend money on a debit card for certain item, including, but not limited to gas, restaurant, hotel, a bit extra is held in reserve. For example, a $100 restaurant charge might hold $125, to allow for a tip. (You're a generous tipper, right?) The actual sales slips my take days to reconcile.  It's for this reason that I've remarked how credit cards have their place. Using debit cards requires that one have more in their account than they need to spend, especially when taking a trip including hotel costs. Generally, credit card networks (as opposed to debit/ATM cards that may or may not have Visa/MC logos) have a rule that a merchant must accept any credit card with their logo. Visa rules for merchants in the US say it explicitly: Accept all types of valid Visa cards. Although Visa card acceptance   rules may vary based on country specific requirements or local   regulations, to offer the broadest possible range of payment options   to cardholder customers, most merchants choose to accept all   categories of Visa debit, credit, and prepaid cards.* Unfortunately the Visa site for China is in Chinese, so I can't find similar reference there. You can complain against a merchant who you think had violated Visa rules here. That said, its not a law, its a contract between the merchant processor and the Visa International organization, and merchants are known to break these rules here and there (most commonly - refusing to accept foreign cards, including in the US). Also, local laws may affect these contracts (for example, in the US it is legal to set minimum amount requirements when accepting credit cards). This only affects credit card processing, and merchants that don't accept credit cards may still accept debit cards since those work in different networks, under a different set of rules. Those who accept credit cards, are also required to accept debit cards (at least if used as credit). "Until the CARD act, credit card rules required that merchants had no minimum purchase requirement to use a card. New rules permit a minimum but it must be clearly posted.  Update - Stores can now refuse small credit card charges is an excellent article which clarifies the rules. It appears that these rules apply to credit, not debit cards. So to be clear - the minimum do not apply to the OP as he referenced using a debit card.  ""Superiority""? Hm. I'd be a bit embarrassed to charge such small amounts. Although when cash in my wallet is very low, I may have little choice. Note, and disclaimer, I am 48, 30 years ago when I started using cards, there were no POS machines. Credit card transactions had a big device that got a card imprint and the merchant looked up to see if your card was stolen in a big book they got weekly/monthly. Times have changed, and debit cards may be faster, especially if with cash you give the cashier $5.37 for a $2.37 transaction, but the guy entered $5 already. This often takes a manager to clear up." "From my days in e-commerce they break down like this? The company doesn't know a debit from a credit card.  Got the Visa logo, then it is a Visa through the company's payment gateway.  The gateway talks to the bank and that is where the particulars for money is figured out. When I programmed gateway interfaces, I had the option to ""authorize"" or check for funds (which didn't reserve anything, just verified funds existed), run for batch (which put a hold on the funds and collected them at the end of the night) or just take the money. Most places did a verify during the early checkout stages and then did a batch at the end of the night.  The nightly batch allows a merchant to cancel a transaction without getting charged a fee. The ""authorize"" doesn't mean the money is tied up, although that might be your banks policy.  Furthermore, an authorize can only last for so many days.  This also explains why most of your banks don't report your transactions to you the day of.  There is a bunch more activity on your card than the transactions that complete." Context clues hun. I was talking about if you go to Chilis and swipe your card for $20 and leave a $5 tip the processing amount the bank takes into account when telling you your available balance is much more likely to be $23 than $25. So the bank knows I went to Chilis the second I swipe my card, but doesnt know the exact amount. I was saying a lot of people dont understand that. They see they spent X at Chilis (processing) and assume it to be fact. I don't understand why you're having such a difficult time with this concept.   Also comparing swiping a debit card as credit to writing a check (in terms of when they show up on your account) is a terrible comparison. When a check goes through the accurate balance is taken out all at once a few days later, but when you swipe a debit card as credit a tentative balance is taken out immediately and adjusted to the actual balance when it settles.   And calling me ignorant because I don't need the help writing down where my money is at or goes is pretty ironic. "Yes, there is a slight reason to worry as the debit card contains  1) Account Number 2) of course a the Debit Card number  3) CSV code at the back of every debit card and  mostly these three parameters are being followed to verify the authenticity of the cardholder, but there are some other parameters like ""password of your debit card"" and even address in some cases. So stay chill the manager will not be able to make any online payment using the credential of your debit card without password and other details..." For me, it is mostly for the fraud protection. If I have a debit card and someone makes a fraudulent charge the money is removed from my bank account.  From my understanding, I can then file a fraud complaint with the bank to recover my money.  However, for some period of time, the money is missing from my bank account.  I've heard conflicting stories of money being returned quickly while the complaint is undergoing investigation as well as money being tied up for several days/weeks.  It may depend on the bank. With a credit card, it is the banks money that is tied up. When using a debit card there are two limits that may be imposed on the use: the current balance and the maximum daily limit. If the banking institution limits your daily usage that may mean that on a particular day you may not be able to make a large purchase, even though you have money in the bank. Otherwise as long as you have funds in the account linked to the debit card you can make the transaction. The catch is that as soon as the transaction is sent to the bank one of two things happens: the money is immediately deducted from the account; or a hold equal to the the amount of the transaction is placed on the account. A hold is generally used when the transaction is done in two parts: the pre-scan at a restaurant, or gas station. The hold reduces the amount of available funds in the account. A hold or an immediate deduction limits the size of future transactions. To be able to make larger transactions you need to transfer more money into the account. There is no debit card transaction that you can do to  artificially allow a larger transaction, unless the bank is not placing a hold or doing an immediate deduction.  Because a debit card is linked to a bank account, some accounts have overdraft protection. This protection comes in two forms: they either transfer your money from another account, or they make a loan. Either way there can be costs involved. First of all, don't be rude-I'm trying to help here.   Second, picture this scenario-  a company manages an offshore oil rig.  The employees by law have to be paid in a certain period of time.  To send paper checks to the employees who work on the oil rig would cost thousands of dollars and the employees can't cash them anyways. Thus the company requires it's employees to have direct deposit.  One of the employees can't or won't get a bank account (yes there are people like this).  How do you pay him?  A prepaid debit card solves this problem. Typically, a direct debit is set up by the company who will be receiving the money, not by you or your bank. So you need to contact your credit card company, and ask them to set up the direct debit. I don't know, ask the various companies I'm forced to do business with why in the hell they want me to stop by their office so I can drop a check off vs just using some means of digital payment.  I would fucking LOVE to ditch paper checks. I imagine that they check it because if they accept one from you and then their bank discovers it when they try to pay it in, it's their loss. There are rules and regulations as to how the credit card information must be stored, and I assume Square adhere to these rules. The point is that the barber doesn't need to see your credit card at all, and doesn't have to keep its number for keeping tabs, you only share the information with Square and they remit payments to everyone else. This is very similar to Paypal, Amazon and Google checkout systems, except that Square combine it with physical card processing.