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Comment by akudha | Hacker News Reader

It would be nice to have some laws around subscription services. Something along the lines of

1. Services have to inform the user (text, email...) every time they charge their card. Even better would be to inform 48 hours before, so users have a chance to cancel.

2. Any subscription service should provide the user to choose the duration, when they sign up. If I need LinkedIn subscription for 3 months, then I should be able to choose at the time of subscription, and it should be canceled automatically after three monthly payments.

And so on. These are all trivial to implement tech wise.

But hey, who am I kidding. These are never going to happen

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That is the case in India enforced by RBI guidelines.

https://rbi.org.in//Scripts/NotificationUser.aspx?Id=11668

Watching this rule come into force has been weird and enlightening in many ways. For one, this rule caused a lot of friction as many banks and payment processing systems weren’t ready for it by the time it came into force. This despite it being announced over two years before it came into effect and a 6-month extension on the enforcement date! Also, while I personally like the new rules and support them wholeheartedly, there’s been significant opposition to them because they make it more onerous for businesses to set up subscriptions, an already rare and difficult business model in India. Personally, if your business mode counts on people so passively continuing to subscribe that they can’t re-authenticate every payment cycle (and that too only if it’s a significant amount per month!) I think you you should rethink what you do, but what do I know?

> For one, this rule caused a lot of friction as many banks and payment processing systems weren’t ready for it by the time it came into force. This despite it being announced over two years before it came into effect and a 6-month extension on the enforcement date!

Probably they hoped that the law got overturned by a change of government or because of lobbying/bribery... why invest in change when there's still a possibility of it being unneeded?

A change in Government isn't due for at least three more years - and even then, it's unlikely, as the ruling party hasn't really lost their popularity. I think you're right in that they were hoping for changes, but maybe through an internal process or something like that which didn't work out as expected.

And cancelling any such service should be required to be no more difficult than signing up for it was. For example, if you can sign up online with a simple form and a button click, you should be able to cancel online with a simple form and a button click.

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