They're called secured cards, and they're very common. My first card was secured, it's a way to get access to a functional credit card (purchase protection, credit reporting, etc) with bad or non-existing credit.
The 2nd to last paragraph in that section starts with: "Secured credit cards are an option to allow a person with a poor credit history or no credit history to have a credit card which might not otherwise be available."
My first credit card was a secured VISA card and it had a high interest APR of 21%. The high interest rate was irrelevant to me. What was most important was that I had a credit card at all. When I got the card, I remembered the first thing I did was order music CDs from the web. This level of convenience wasn't possible by mailing in money orders. Since I paid off the full balance every month, whatever high interest rate the card had didn't affect me.