The crux of the question is, I guess, if a renewed credit card (with a new expiration date) is a "new credit card". Presumably this feature wouldn't work if you

The crux of the question is, I guess, if a renewed credit card (with a new expiration date) is a "new credit card". Presumably this feature wouldn't work if you changed your card to one with a different CC number because it's a new account. If I lose/damage my card and have to get a new physical card, I at least don't think of that as a "new" card in terms of billing. It's not a new account with the card company in a contractual sense. I understand the issues with some companies making it really hard to cancel a subscription, and I agree that there should be more regulation around being able to unsubscribe easily, but in the abstract, a subscription is a contract to pay X a month for Y service until you give the vendor notice of cancellation under some terms. If anything "canceling" by intentionally voiding your payment information in this way is a hack of the system, and a little unethical, even if it's expedient. I would guess that, in the majority case, people's subscriptions lapsing due to their card expiring isn't intentional. I know I've certainly had to re-subscribe to a lot of things before, due to my card having to be replaced because of fraudulent activity, and if it could have just automatically incremented my expiration date by a couple months, that would have saved me hours of work.