MasterCard Adds Security Measure to Prevent Automatic Billing After a Free Trial Finishes
Thursday, January 17, 2019 IST
The company now requires anyone taking your card details for a free trial or subscription to share regular updates about the cost, and how to cancel.
Your online pre-subscription free trials of an app or service are about to get a whole lot simpler. Credit card company MasterCard has announced that it is implementing a new policy for merchants and companies which retain your credit card information after you sign up for a free trial. This is quite true for a lot of apps and web services. Mastercard will now require those merchants to request an official authorization before they charge you for any recurring subscriptions.
This is great news for anyone who may have signed up for a free trial, and then forgotten about it or simply slipped their mind to cancel the subscription if they didn’t wish to continue. In the present scenario, the company offering the free trial would go ahead and simply charge you for the actual subscription as soon as the trial would finish—with the card information which you shared with them at the time of signing up. In the communication by the service offering the trial and subscription, users will get the details such as the transaction amount, payment date, the merchant the payment is being made to and clear instructions on how to cancel the trial.
Subsequently, MasterCard also requires merchants to send periodical updates with receipts indicating the payment details, amount of payment made or to be made and clear instructions on how to cancel the subscription. This will be handy in case there are any changes to the subscription cost at some point, and you may not really have noticed that as a subscriber. “For each payment thereafter, the merchant will have to send a receipt to the cardholder for each transaction by email or text message with clear instructions on how to cancel the service if the consumer so desires. In addition, all charges that appear on the cardholder’s statement must now include the merchant website URL or the phone number of the store where the cardholder made the purchase,” says MasterCard in an official statement.
However, MasterCard’s policy isn’t exactly clarifying if this is true for any scenario where you directly share your MasterCard card details (such as streaming services including Netflix or productivity software subscription such as the Adobe Creative Cloud), or will also apply for subscriptions signed up for through application stores such as the Apple App Store, Google Play Store and Microsoft Store.
Related Topics
Trending News & Articles
ALMATY: Hour upon hour, day upon day, Omir Bekali and other detainees in far western China's new indoctrination camps had to disavow the...
Recently posted . 213K views . 1 min read
If you have payed attention to the belly buttons of people on the beach or the members of your family, you have probably noticed that they have different shapes and...
Recently posted . 10K views . 2 min read
The Langya henipavirus has a place with a similar group of infections, including Nipah, which is known to kill up to 3/4 of people in extreme cases.
Recently posted . 5K views . 1 min read
Queen's death: The eldest of her four children, Charles, Prince of Wales, who at 73 was the oldest heir apparent in British history, became king immediately...
Recently posted . 5K views . 1 min read
More in National
Elon Musk, the Tesla chief who recently announced taking over Twitter, also praised the architecture of the Agra fort as "amazing".
Recently posted. 965 views . 1 min read
Is there a way to control or stop bad dreams?
The sheets are damp with sweat. You're cold, but your heart is racing as if...
Recently posted. 864 views . 2 min read
Almost 2 million tourists flock to Cape Town every year to bathe on sandy white beaches, explore natural features like Table Mountain or to sip wine in dozens of ne...
Recently posted. 824 views . 1 min read
Recently posted . 1K views
Recently posted . 1K views
Recently posted . 2K views
Recently posted . 2K views
Recently posted . 3K views . 67 min read
Recently posted . 3K views . 140 min read
Her 'Airings' video has gone viral with over 3.4 million views
Recently posted. 705 views . 0 min read
The Islamabad High Court had refused to extend the bail granted to Zardari and his sister, Faryal Talpur.
Recently posted. 717 views . 0 min read