CreditCards Blog

Hi, not sure I'm in the right forum, but I'm gonna go for it...

I have a pitch booking with a 5aside football pitch place, and they ask for debit card details so that they can reclaim the cost of the pitch should teams not turn up. This is understandable, probably happens often.

I've sent my details before, but they now tell me they don't have them on record so have asked again. This doesn't show good security! But I was wondering, what do they actually need to be able to withdraw money? What is too much?

In March they asked for:

Long card number:
Start date:
Expiry date:
Issue Number:
last 3 digits of security number:.

And now it is:

Card number
Start date
Expiry date
Security number
House number
Post code


Normally alarm bells would be going off all over the place, but I'm not giving them details of my main account where my salary etc is going so it's not too much of a problem (please don't just tell me to not tell them anything!).

It is a reputable and busy operation, but perhaps they are not as clued up as they should be, so can anyone tell me what they minimum info they need is, and that's all I'll pass on.

Thank you (if I'm in the wrong place, just say!)

This is better security than a small company holding on to your debit card details in the off chance that they will need to charge it, I know which one I would prefer to do.

I usually find all that is needed for a transaction is the card number, expiry date and CV2 number. Occasionally get asked for home number / postcode but not that often. Suppose they will need to capture whatever details their merchant bank requires them to.

It's fine. For cardholder-not-present transactions (mail / telephone / internet orders) there are two security checks that banks can perform.

The first is the card verification value, which is the last three digits on the signature strip on the back of the card - this is supposed to prove that you have the card in your possession and haven't just got an imprint of the embossed side.

The second is the address verification systems (AVS). This is where the numeric data in your address is used to form a code that is passed on to your bank. They then use this against the information that they have on record for you. By asking for your postcode and house number they have this.

That's excellent, thanks to both of you for replying!