How Subsecute Pays for a Renewal

The obvious way to build this app is to hand your card to Netflix and let Netflix charge it on the renewal date. That is what most services do, and it works right up until the moment it does not.

We do it slightly differently, and it is a fair thing to ask about.

Each subscription you add gets its own virtual card. Ahead of the renewal date, we charge the payment method you added — your card or your direct debit — for that one subscription, and put the money on that one card. When the merchant comes to collect, it is already sitting there.

Ahead of the date, not on it

A renewal date is a single moment. If anything is wrong at that moment, the payment fails.

Not enough in the account that morning. The card was replaced last week. A limit changed. The bank is having a bad day. None of these are your fault, and all of them cost you the subscription.

Charging in advance moves the risky part earlier. If something goes wrong, there is still room before the renewal to fix it. If a charge fails on the day the merchant asks, you find out afterwards, usually from the merchant.

To be clear about what we are and are not saying: we do not control your bank or the card networks, and we cannot promise a payment will never fail. What we can do is stop the whole thing from depending on one transaction landing at one exact minute, and tell you straight away when one does not go through.

You hear about it first

A reminder comes ahead of each renewal, before anything is charged.

If you still want the subscription, it continues and you do not have to do anything. If you do not, you stop it before the debit, not by chasing a refund after.

An app that has handed your card to a merchant cannot ask you first. It has no idea what is coming or when.

We charge what the merchant actually charged

Prices move. Netflix puts its plan up, a service quietly adds tax, an exchange rate shifts.

Rather than trusting the number you typed in when you added the subscription, we look at what the card was actually charged last cycle and fund for that. A price rise means a slightly larger charge next time, not a card that comes up short at the till.

What it costs you

One saved payment method, and a charge from us shortly before each renewal rather than one from the merchant on the day.

In exchange you get told before money moves, a separate card per subscription so cancelling one never touches the rest, and a renewal that is not riding on a single transaction clearing at a single moment.