Mastercard has announced a new policy for merchants that retain customers’ card information after they sign up for a free trial. The comopany is introducing new rules for merchants that offer free-trials to make this a hassle-free experience for their consumers.
„The rule change will require merchants to gain cardholder approval at the conclusion of the trial before they start billing. To help cardholders with that decision, merchants will be required to send the cardholder – either by email or text – the transaction amount, payment date, merchant name along with explicit instructions on how to cancel a trial.”, according to the press release.
„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.”, the company added.
The policy is aimed for busy people who might not want to continue paying for a service or product that they just wanted to test out. Sometimes, a free trial can unwittingly turn into a recurring subscription that is difficult to cancel. These situations can be frustrating and costly for both consumers and their banks.
Banking 4.0 – „how was the experience for you”
„So many people are coming here to Bucharest, people that I see and interact on linkedin and now I get the change to meet them in person. It was like being to the Football World Cup but this was the World Cup on linkedin in payments and open banking.”
Many more interesting quotes in the video below:
