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Funny you mention that. I have a friend who works as a 'think up interesting new products' person for one of Australia's big 4 banks. On their list of stuff to

Funny you mention that. I have a friend who works as a 'think up interesting new products' person for one of Australia's big 4 banks. On their list of stuff to try is some way of centrally managing your subscriptions for you. No idea how they'd pull it off – do you have to set up relationships with every provider, globally?! – but it's certainly an interesting idea. The number of subscriptions we have is only going in one direction.

Wowfunhappy 8y ago
In terms of execution, I believe subscription charges are a distinct "type" of transaction. I have a weird money management system that involves two bank accounts, one of which regularly can go down to a zero balance. When this happens, I rely on the bank to deny the transaction when I use my debit card, which they do—I have overdraft "protection" turned off—unless it's an autorenewing subscription. My bank has told me these types of transactions can't be blocked because they're considered pre-approved. My point being, the credit card company knows which transactions are "subscriptions", so they should be able to provide you with a list. No provider relationship needed. (I'm in the US, no idea if Australia is the same)
notSupplied 8y ago
One way of doing it is flagging all subscription payments as "requires me to give it the thumbs up each cycle otherwise the payment is declined or trigger a charge back". This would not require any integration with any service provider as you're simply declining any payments that weren't explicitly agreed to by the user. A big bank has the muscle to attempt this, because most service providers would be too scared to let these transactions fail and send collections after people because having too many charge backs paints a target on your back and they could get booted off the network. This generally lines up with my philosophy that all payments should be initiated by users on a one-off basis. It really shouldn't be too much hassle to approve every monthly recurring cost you have.

Wowfunhappy 8y ago

In terms of execution, I believe subscription charges are a distinct "type" of transaction. I have a weird money management system that involves two bank accounts, one of which regularly can go down to a zero balance. When this happens, I rely on the bank to deny the transaction when I use my debit card, which they do—I have overdraft "protection" turned off—unless it's an autorenewing subscription. My bank has told me these types of transactions can't be blocked because they're considered pre-approved. My point being, the credit card company knows which transactions are "subscriptions", so they should be able to provide you with a list. No provider relationship needed. (I'm in the US, no idea if Australia is the same)

notSupplied 8y ago

One way of doing it is flagging all subscription payments as "requires me to give it the thumbs up each cycle otherwise the payment is declined or trigger a charge back". This would not require any integration with any service provider as you're simply declining any payments that weren't explicitly agreed to by the user. A big bank has the muscle to attempt this, because most service providers would be too scared to let these transactions fail and send collections after people because having too many charge backs paints a target on your back and they could get booted off the network. This generally lines up with my philosophy that all payments should be initiated by users on a one-off basis. It really shouldn't be too much hassle to approve every monthly recurring cost you have.