Recurring transactions are a way of making regular payments on your credit card and are commonly used to pay subscriptions, utility bills and sometimes credit agreements. The problem is that neither the card holder nor the credit card company can stop the payments. Only the company that set up the transaction can do that – and some seem less than keen to do just that!

Sometimes the company that set up the recurring transaction is difficult to find, sometimes it is simply inefficient at stopping the transactions – but we believe that sometimes it’s an outright scam. They seem to be able to continue taking payments long after the final payment has been made.

These transactions are different to a direct debit. With a direct debit, the banks guarantee that if there is a problem, they will sort it out and absorb the excess payments and costs. Not so with recurring transactions. Here the agreement is directly between the card holder and the supplier of the goods or service. As it is then the supplier who originates the payment, it is only the supplier who can stop it. The banks say, quite rightly, that as the agreement is between the card holder and the supplier they can’t intervene. If they refused the payment they would be effectively cancelling the purchase agreement to which they are not party and they are not entitled to do that.

So what is your remedy if you need to stop a recurring transaction? Well the only thing you can do is write to the supplier asking them to cancel the payments and copy the letter to your credit card. If they continue to take payments, the card company can intervene by instructing the supplier to stop the payments. If it won’t then maybe at some stage the bank might get tough with the supplier, but unless they can see wholesale fraud, they’re unlikely to get tough.

Could you cancel you credit card? Yes but if you set up a new one with the same credit card company, when that happens arrangements on your old card are often automatically transferred to the new card – so the problem stats again all by itself. The only chance you’ve got is to cancel your existing card and get a new card with an entirely new card company.

And what about all the excess payments you’ve made. Well you should eventually get your money back if the over payments were an administrative error. Otherwise, try whistling!