Visa’s new rules for subscription services

In an effort to bring more transparency to consumers, Visa has updated its rules for merchants offering free trials and introductory promotions related to subscription products. Merchants must provide more information and notifications to customers who are enrolled in recurring billing cycles. The updates are not only intended to benefit cardholders, but reduce chargebacks for business owners as well.

Visa requirements breakdown

• Merchants must gather customer’s consent before entering them into a subscription cycle.
• Merchants must provide their terms and conditions at the point of enrollment (point of enrollment includes trial or promotional periods). Terms must contain the following:

• • Cardholder confirmation enrolling them into a subscription product.
  • Subscription start date
  • Details of goods and services
  • Payment amounts and billing date/frequency
  • Simple method to cancel subscriptions online.

• Merchants must notify customers at least 7 days before the cardholder’s trial or promotional period expires.
• Merchants must update the descriptor of the recurring payment that follows a trial or promotional period to include a trial reference.
• Merchants must provide a receipt for each recurring transaction that includes the following details:

• • Details of trial or promotional details
  • Transaction date and amount. (Even if the trial amount is $0.00)
  • Simple method to cancel the subscription online.

Click here to learn more about Visa’s new subscription service requirements.