The subscriptions that keep taking money

The average household now holds a substantial number of recurring payments — streaming services, software, storage, memberships, insurance, delivery services, apps.

They renew automatically. They continue after death. And they are frequently paid from an account nobody is monitoring.

Why they are hard to find

Annual subscriptions may not appear on a bank statement for eleven months.

App store billing. Subscriptions purchased through a phone appear on a statement as a single charge from the platform, with no indication of what they are for. Identifying them requires access to the account.

Card payments rather than direct debits. Direct debits appear on a list the bank can produce. Recurring card payments frequently do not, and continue even after a card is reported as belonging to a deceased person until the merchant is told.

Small amounts that do not attract attention individually.

Third-party payment services, where the charge appears as the payment processor rather than the merchant.

How to find them

Statements for a full year, from every account and card. Twelve months catches annual renewals.

Go through line by line. It is tedious and it is the only reliable method.

Ask the bank for a list of direct debits and standing orders. They can produce one.

Check the app store accounts on any phone or tablet, which list active subscriptions in one place.

Search the email inbox for terms like receipt, renewal, subscription, invoice and payment. This is frequently the most productive method.

Check the password manager, which will list accounts even where payments are not obvious.

The cancellation problem

Some are straightforward. Some are not.

Companies that require the account holder to cancel. An executor may be told that only the account holder can cancel, which is unhelpful. Escalate, and cite the death certificate.

Many companies have bereavement teams that are considerably more effective than general customer service. Ask for them by name.

Companies with no accessible cancellation route. Some require phoning during limited hours, or navigating a retention process designed to prevent cancellation.

Contracts with minimum terms, such as mobile phone and broadband contracts. Many providers waive early termination charges on production of a death certificate, and this is worth asking about explicitly since it is not always offered.

The bank route

Cancelling a direct debit at the bank stops the payment and does not cancel the contract, which means arrears may accumulate and be pursued against the estate.

For most consumer subscriptions this is a low risk. For contracts with minimum terms it is not, and cancelling with the provider is the safer route.

Closing the account entirely stops everything, and it is worth documenting what was being paid before doing so, since a cancelled payment for an insurance policy may leave a property uninsured.

The ones that matter beyond the money

Cloud storage. Covered elsewhere on this site. Cancelling before retrieving the contents can result in permanent deletion of photographs. Retrieve first.

Domain names and hosting, which lapse and may be lost, which matters for a business or for anyone with a website of significance.

Insurance policies, which should be reviewed rather than simply cancelled. A property becoming unoccupied frequently requires notification to the insurer and may require a specific policy.

Utilities, which need transferring rather than stopping if anyone is still living in the property.

Software licences a business depends on.

What can be reclaimed

Payments taken after the date of death can frequently be refunded on request, particularly by larger companies with bereavement processes.

It is worth asking. Many will refund from the date of death rather than from the date of notification.

Direct debits taken in error can be reclaimed under the guarantee schemes that operate in some countries.

What to do in advance

Keep a list. What you subscribe to, roughly what it costs, and which card it is on.

This takes twenty minutes and saves an executor several days.

Consolidate onto one card where practical, which makes both finding and stopping them straightforward.

Review annually. Most people are paying for things they do not use, and an annual review typically finds several. This is worth doing for its own sake.

Note which ones matter — the storage account with the photographs, the domain, the insurance — so that whoever deals with it knows what to preserve rather than cancel.

The wider point

The proliferation of small recurring payments is a design choice by companies, because subscriptions that are difficult to cancel and easy to forget are profitable.

Regulators in several jurisdictions have begun addressing this, with rules requiring easier cancellation and clearer renewal reminders.

Until that is universal, the defence is a list, kept current, and an annual look at what you are actually paying for.

Consumer rights on cancellation and refunds differ by country. Ask specifically for a company's bereavement team, which frequently has more discretion than general customer service.