Fact check: Can carding websites be used for legitimate business purposes, such as market research?

1. Why reporters and market forecasts avoid the question — payment industry framing that sidelines carding

Industry market analyses examined here concentrate on legitimate payment innovation and security, not on illicit carding ecosystems; reports about virtual and card payments highlight growth in virtual cards, digital wallets and contactless solutions as responses to digitization and remote work, emphasizing security and control rather than any endorsement of underground markets for business intelligence ^{[2] [4] [5]}. These documents date from late 2025 through early 2026 and reflect vendor and analyst agendas that prioritize regulatory-compliant solutions and risk mitigation, which explains the absence of guidance on using illicit marketplaces for sanctioned research purposes. The framing indicates a clear industry interest in defending lawful channels and discouraging engagement with criminal platforms.

2. Criminal technique coverage shows risks, not legitimate use cases

Reporting on criminal tactics — for example, NFC "Ghost Tap" cash-out methods and identity-fraud schemes — treats carding as an operational security threat rather than a research tool, highlighting modalities that enable theft and systemic harm ^[3]. These 2025 articles underline the practical and legal danger of interacting with carding infrastructure: stolen data, laundering pathways, and novel attack vectors. Framing by security reporters and practitioners implicitly warns that any attempt to leverage these marketplaces for competitive intelligence or market sensing would entangle researchers in liability, contamination of datasets, and reputational risk. The coverage therefore functions as a deterrent and reflects an agenda to prioritize consumer protection.

3. The lone study that mentions "market research" is tentative and ambiguous

A 2026 study examining online harms and sharing behaviors notes that carding websites can be used for “various purposes, including market research,” yet it expressly declines to frame those activities as legitimate business practice ^[1]. This duality suggests two readings: researchers may have observed that actors use illicit data to learn about pricing, testing, or demand signals, but the study does not validate legality or ethical acceptability. The ambiguity likely reflects methodological caution and legal constraints on admitting use of stolen data — the authors might be documenting observed behaviors without endorsing them, and that restraint signals an ethical boundary recognized by academic and policy communities.

4. What the absence of direct evidence implies — gaps in public documentation

Multiple industry and policy sources from 2025–2026 do not discuss lawful uses of carding sites for business purposes ^{[2] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]}. This consistent silence across vendor forecasts, payments journalism, and policy analyses suggests either that legitimate actors do not commonly rely on these platforms, or that any such usage is clandestine and therefore undocumented for legal and reputational reasons. The evidence gap itself is informative: mainstream actors and vendors have incentives to distance themselves from illicit ecosystems, and researchers bound by ethics may avoid or anonymize findings, producing a limited public record.

5. Legal, ethical and methodological obstacles block straightforward "legitimate" use

Even where actors might seek alternative data sources, using carding platforms raises clear legal prohibitions, contamination risk, and methodological bias: datasets derived from stolen or fraudulently obtained records are illegal in many jurisdictions, may be deliberately manipulated by sellers, and will likely misrepresent legitimate market dynamics. Sources stressing identity verification and secure transactions underline the opposite approach — develop lawful telemetry and synthetic testing that preserve privacy and compliance rather than tapping criminal markets ^[6]. Policymakers and firms therefore have incentives to pursue privacy-preserving, sanctioned research methods.

6. Competing agendas: researchers documenting behavior vs. industry denouncing risk

Academic work that documents illicit markets can appear to normalize observation of noncompliant behavior; the 2026 study’s cautious wording may reflect an agenda to map harms without encouraging misuse ^[1]. By contrast, industry reports emphasize secure products and regulatory alignment, advancing commercial interests in legal payment channels ^{[2] [4]}. Security journalism that details criminal tactics serves a public-protection agenda, deterring engagement. These competing perspectives explain why the same ecosystem can be described analytically without yielding prescriptive advice for corporate use.

7. Bottom line for practitioners: evidence does not validate legitimate research use, proceed with lawful alternatives

Across sources dated 2025–2026, there is no documented, ethically or legally endorsed model for businesses to use carding websites for market research ^{[2] [5] [3] [1]}. The closest mention is observational and ambiguous, and other materials stress security and the criminality of carding. Organizations seeking market intelligence should therefore rely on sanctioned data sources, privacy-preserving techniques, and vendor partnerships rather than illicit marketplaces; the literature endorses lawful telemetry and fraud-resistant testing as the defensible path ^{[6] [7]}.