Cannot execute shared runners (credit card requested for project devs)

We have a free plan and we are unable to use shared runners due to the lack of a credit card on the account. When following the procedure outlined in this documentation (GitLab subscription | GitLab) we were unable to register the card.

It was reported that the root user can use the shared runners but the developers within our group cannot.

I’m also running into a similar issue - a developer recently had to enter credit card information for access to shared runners. It seems that this is to avoid crypto mining abuse: Preventing Crypto Mining abuse on GitLab.com SaaS.

I’m okay putting my credit card information in somewhere, but I really don’t want to have student developers needing to provide any financial information. Is there a way around this? Or does everyone who pushes to a repository with shared runners need to provide credit card information?

If that’s the case, is there any information in the documentation about whether the credit card information is stored? I’m concerned that a student (or anyone) might get a charge for e.g. over-using minutes, or because of an accounting mistake (this happened to me once and it was a nasty surprise!).

It seems like there are a few other similar, “could we please have another form of user validation”, issues: