wasnt saying it happens, speculating how it might be possible to achive without breaching data protection law. an awful lot of anonymised data about us is sent between companies without our permission or any awareness it even occurs.
thinking about it, it may be reasonable to consider the Credit Card number to be their information since they issue it. so conceivably they could issue an update say where customer is xyz (<- hashed version of the actual name) change number 123 to 456. because you wouldnt want to send out a...
there's another thing, if send details shirley they'd be sent a file with thousands of cards renewed that month and process it as a batch - not just update Mr Goldstone1976.
i believe they revoke authentication of the existing card once the new one is issue (or certain time after). they wouldn't send out details of every card in the world to every merchant in the world, or even just the large ones.