My dad came up to me a few weeks ago saying he found a cheaper prepaid credit card company; me being cheap, directly signed up for a card (paid €10), and got the card in the mail after a week or so. I closed my previous prepaid card accounts, and in the weeks that followed I got a lot of emails from companies that my subscriptions were going to end. I didn't add my new card to any of them. After a month or so all the subscriptions stopped as all the payments got declined (the account didn't exist anymore). But somehow I didn't lose anything that was really necessary for me. I didn't even notice that I had lost services.
I feel like the problem here is the lack of knowledge that customers have (like me) on how much they spend in a month. Yes, they see money flowing out of their accounts, but is that a big problem? No, they are small amounts. But if you combine everything you spend on monthly costs with stuff you don't actually need, it'll be a lot… After that experience I summed up the amount of money that failed to go off my card, and it was over 80 euros. Might not be much for some people here, but keep in mind: I'm a student. The big problem is that we as customers don't have a summary of everything we spend on a monthly basis on our bank accounts; it's just not there. Some banks start doing some kind of “lite” version of keeping insights of your money; but is it good enough?
When I stopped my card I saw about 3 payments for ROBLOX not going through… Roblox? I only play that game whenever my friends ask me these days, but do I really have 3 subscriptions running on it?? I checked out the accounts, and the accounts were stacked with in-game currency and other items. One of the accounts I haven't touched for almost 2 years now and had over 250$ worth of in-game currency on it. And that without even noticing, my money was getting spent on that.
Yes, the monthly payments give companies some kind of monthly income for some extra rewards in return. But do people (or even other companies) really want this way of paying? If I knew that account wasn't a thing, I would've saved about 250 euros in the past 2 years, which I could have spent or saved for later spending. I feel like if you pay on a monthly basis for a standard plan, most companies / users will overpay for the amount they actually use. There should be enough alternatives that offer pay for usage, just so there is a good alternative for new coming companies / new users to not directly be bound to a contract.