I have booked lot of hotels on booking.com. I have their genius
status. I have successfully used cards previously to book the hotel without providing CVV number. They never asked me this in my previous bookings. However, today when I was booking hotel, before confirmation, system was asking me to provide CVV number along with other cards details.
Initially, I used to think that booking.com handles pre-authorization payments (which I personally find more reliable than hotel directly accessing my card info). But then I saw few FAQs like this which suggests that hotels will have access to all of this information.
Is it safe to provide it? What if hotel misuses it?