Financial Reg. Data retention in relation to credit card transactions

Does anyone know what rules are in place for data storage in relation to credit card debits.

For example, if I'm opening a spread betting account and use my credit card for the initial deposit only- would a hard copy - not electronic -of the transaction with all the information (address, expiry date etc) be held on file by the company in question?

I was under the impression that if I were giving my CC details over the phone that they'd be input directly into whatever payment system used- and NEVER written down and kept..

Hope my query makes sense

If you're putting money into a spread betting account from your credit card, don't assume you are going to make loads money and that you won't have to make another payment from your credit card. When the markets move against you, you are required to pay further margin to keep your positions open. Speaking from experience, I've lost a fortune from spreadbetting recently and would warn you against opening any kind of a spreadbetting account, particularly if you are using your credit card to finance the spreadbetting and do not have cash that you can afford to lose.

Thanks Robbie- but thankfully I'm one of the lucky who has done very well from Spreadbetting- I was only using my CC to fund the initial deposit of 300- all the rest comes from my savings account.
With my initial query, I was merely enquiring as to whether the Regulator allowed the CC details to be kept on hard copy as opposed to electronically encryted for security reasons
Sorry to hear you lost so much money- I firmly believe the trick is not to overleverage and build your capital slowly so that you have extra funds to finance a position hardly touching the initial capital after a few months.
Plus-if you don't use stop losses you're only begging for trouble...