Mastercard protects consumers from automatic billing after free trials

We've all been there. A magazine we're interested in, a streaming video service, or beauty products that promise free trials of their amazing service and product provided you give your credit card information. You know, for easy billing after the demo period. The next thing you know, you've been paying the company for a service or product you don't really want and now have to run through the time-consuming process of cancelling payment.

Mastercard now protects consumers from this disreputable tactic. Mastercard wants to make sure these experiences are hassle-free and is introducing rules for merchants that offer free-trials. The rule change, going into effect globally in April 2019, will require merchants to gain cardholder approval at the conclusion of the trial before they start billing.

These new rules from Mastercard will help increase transparency and ensure an outstanding experience for cardholders.

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.

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.

Update on Thursday, January 17, 2019 at 3:54PM by Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

Welp! This was too good to be true. Mastercard is clarifying that their service applies only to physical goods, so consumers can still be taken advantage of by online or subscriptions and other free trials.- ED