Mastercard’s new policy aims to prevent unwanted subscriptions

BUT ONLY FOR PHYSICAL PRODUCTS…

MASTERCARD RECENTLY ANNOUNCED it would be putting an end to automatic debits from subscriptions that start up once a free trial has ended, but the company has now clarified that the new policy isn’t quite as useful as we’d hoped. The updated blog post now clearly states that “the rule change is [only] applicable to physical products such as skincare, healthcare items etc.”, which doesn’t have quite the same impact as enforcing the same policy on digital and software subscriptions. From now on, merchants (selling physical product subscriptions) are required “to gain cardholder approval at the conclusion of the trial before they start billing” and also to reiterate the cost and duration of the paid subscription, and explicit instructions on how to cancel. Naturally, the initial announcement from Mastercard was received warmly by consumers thinking they’d finally not have to worry about sneaky digital and software trials that roll over into the payment period, so it’s unfortunate that the policy statement has since been revised to provide a much more limited reach.