Ask HN: What about rechargeable pricing plans?

I live in europe and I can't use Stripe for recurring payments. I didn't want to go with other services because they seem too expensive and quite complicated to setup.

So I thought to myself, why not implement a simple rechargeable system, where the user simply pays through a PayPal Pay Now button? 1 month, 3 months, 6 months and 12 months plans. After the period is over, the users are reminded to re-charge in order to continue using my service.

From a user perspective this has several positive outcomes:

1) The user isn't locked into any month-to-month thing.

2) They don't need to store their credit card info anywhere - Stripe and other 3rd party services are PCI compliant, but users feel safer knowing that their CC info is only used for that specific transaction and not being stored somewhere.

3) The user is in control. Just like my pre-paid cellphone, I charge it whenever I'm out of credit - it's just simpler than having something that bills me monthly. Just the feeling that a service is connected to my Credit Card makes me feel a little unsafe.

Why aren't services being built this way? Am I missing something?