Does anyone have a bank account that enables them to approve every single subscription or SaaS payment before it’s released to a co?

I’ve seen Ramp in the US that looks awesome but not used anything in the UK outside of Pleo that isn’t as feature rich or quite manage this.

Can’t believe that every bank or credit card doesn’t have this as standard, with the ability to unsubscribe from services without having to log in to external websites.

I’ve had team members sign up for services that were approved, but billing terms then getting changed post card details applied by multiple vendors lately as they push for cashflow. e.g. Monthly credit card payments at £10, suddenly become monthly at £25, billed quarterly or annually in advance, notification sent to staff members rather than co.

It’s always the low value stuff that doesn’t hit procurement or is actively managed. While I sort it out for business, I’m interested to do the same for myself and family personally too.

Where do you live?

Sounds a bit crazy.

London, mostly overseas SaaS co’s causing the pain though.

I get the request is a bit niche.

If I simplify to standard personal usethat the average person may face:

I want the ability to block Netflix getting paid unless I approve the payment every month from within my banking app.

Not a chance. If I get around to it I’ll explain tomorrow when I’m at a keyboard.

The thing that allows this to happen is a “continuous payment authority” with the bank for your account. I could imagine that a bank could put something in place that prompts you to approve.

It could cause a world of pain to crap companies though. I imagine before Direct Debit (different but similar concept I know) was a thing, customers would routinely withhold payment for things when there was an issue, putting the onus on the supplier to sort it out. Nowadays companies like Virgin Media just take whatever they think they should out of my account and when it’s wrong the onus is on me to get through to someone with half a brain who can sort it out and refund.

Monthly commit saas products are often an order of magnitude more expensive than Annual commit (with monthly billing), think 20-30%. Annual commit products can’t pump your prices up mid term either. Sounds like you already have the monthly commit option, then getting the hump when they put prices up, as they are perfectly entitled to do.

Commit for longer and you’ll probably save money over a year or so.

or just make sure you have auto renew turned off on any products you do have, and remember to renew every month.

or stop staff from using their personal contact details for the notifications of renewal. They won’t cancel stuff when they leave the business if it’s on a company card. Better yet, stop them using the company card to buy them

which software companies are we talking about? B2B stuff?

SaaS B2B. Plenty of apps out there over different departments. I’m not bothered about monthly Vs annual savings unless it’s something that’s used at scale. The challenge is significant price increases or changes to terms, alongside people signing up for something they only use once or for the duration of a project, but forget to turn off the subscription.

Ideally I want to give each staff member their own card, then be able track and approve all recurring expenses. If the card provider also offers spend management, centralised purchase and approval for SaaS, even better.

@IHN Would love to know why it’s not possible. Seems to may the only people that would suffer outside of business are bad gym chains and companies that put up barriers to unsubscribe.

It is cards schemes that mandate banks offer recurring payment services. As a bank, if you want to use Visa or Mastercard, that is part of the bargain.

Yea, I was surprised the other day when I looked at my account how few direct debits there were, only 5!

Everything else that I thought was a “Direct Debit” is actually as you say, just a recurring card transaction and can’t be canceled outside of the retailers system.

the only people that would suffer outside of business are bad gym chains and companies that put up barriers to unsubscribe.

This is why I actually like Puregym, there’s no option to cancel your membership, it just directs you to a page that says cancel your DD <3 days before it’s due and your membership just runs until the period you’ve paid for expires. No faff, no call centers, no hard selling.

Paypal lets you do it which makes me wonder even more, why not standard banks?

I’d pay for that service.

I’d look into something like Revolut that offers virtual cards – not sure if they offer a business account though.

Nice, Revolut do exactly that with Virtual cards you can cancel anytime. Basically does exactly what I wanted per both business and personal use.

Quick check shows Starling, Wise and Lloyds also do it.

Cheers