The primary reason that a company wants to get a hold of your payment details (or at least a way of charging to them; Stripe etc) is to streamline the charging

The primary reason that a company wants to get a hold of your payment details (or at least a way of charging to them; Stripe etc) is to streamline the charging process when the customer is to be charged again. Plus it has the added benefit (for the compnay) of having the customer feel like it's a sunk cost once it's been charged (Netflix monthly access, Amazon Prime yearly shipping, etc). Think about everything that you get billed for regularly that you wouldn't necessarily pay for if it were left up to you. In the case of your prepaid cell phone the cell company knows that you: 1) Want to be able to make phone calls 2) Want to be able to receive phone calls 3) Want to keep your phone number I'd wager that you're much more likely to make sure you're prepaid phone is paid then your Netflix account each month. All that aside I think it's a very pleasant model from the perspective of the customer (I personally avoid auto billing whenever possible and even resort to single use credit card numbers for anything new or remotely shady). If you have an engaging enough product I see no issue starting off with this model though I'd recommend eventually migrating to a model where you implement your own recurring payments.