How to Cancel PayPal Billing Agreement or Automatic Renewal

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Cancel PayPal Billing Agreement or Automatic Renewal
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Last time we shared how to find recurring pay list in Paypal and now extending this series to stop you getting billed automatically in Paypal. How many times it happened that you have registered a domain name, say from GoDaddy, and a year later you were charged automatically even when you ignore their renewal reminders? Or, you signed up for a monthly subscription for some service and then didn’t find (hidden) option to cancel the subscription which gets automatically renewed?

I am one of those unfortunate people who was charged by many services automatically when I didn’t want to renew. And this guide is to help you save your fortune!

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Cancel PayPal Billing Agreement/Subscription

1. Log into your PayPal account.

2. Click on Profile Tab as shown below.

PayPal Billing Agreement
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3. On next screen, you will see many options/links. Click on “My money > My pre-approved payment.” (see screenshot)

4.

Cancel Paypal pre approved Payment
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5. On this page, you can filter then Paypal subscription list based on active and suspended. Select active to filter currently active pre-approved payments on your Paypal account.

Pre-approved Paypal list
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6.

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You will see on next page terms of billing agreement/subscription, how much money you have authorized the service provider to deduct from your account and few other details. Most important links to Cancel agreement, in case if it is active.

7.

Billing Agreement Details - PayPal
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8. If you click on Cancel, you just have to confirm it once again.

Cancel Paypal Automatic Billing
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That’s it. You have to repeat last 2-3 steps for each provider one-by-one.

When do you need to cancel PayPal Billing Agreement?

There are situations where you need to know how to cancel billing agreements or automated subscription renewals. Few of them are mentioned below…

  1. If you are using your PayPal account to buy a domain name/hosting or anything on behalf of your friend, you must check your PayPal account’s My pre-approved payment page afterward. Without your clear knowledge, you might have entered into billing agreement or automated subscriptions where you will be charged unknowingly.
  2. If you have subscribed to a service where the option to cancel subscription or billing agreement is not given. From the developers perspective, we know that when creating a service which uses PayPal API for subscription/billing agreements, we are not forced to give the option to cancel them in user-interface at all.
  3. You don’t like the service and want to say bye-bye to them! It will be safer to cancel automated payments at PayPal’s end.

But PayPal Billing Agreement/Subscription is a Good Feature

In GoDaddy’s case, I was new to the web and did not know the meaning of “PayPal Billing Agreement.” It sounded to me like terms of service/privacy agreement which we never read but always have to agree to! 😀

When I brought domain, I thought I was done after completing the payment via PayPal. But a year later, I was charged automatically.I thought, ignoring domain renewal emails from GoDaddy would suffice, but later I realized, GoDaddy by default set domain registration to renew automatically.

Also, when you pay by PayPal (or credit card), you enter into a “Billing Agreement” which authorize GoDaddy to charge your PayPal account at the time of renewal without your intervention. This Billing Agreement authorize them to charge your PayPal account even if after your death, provided you have some balance left in your PayPal! 😉

GoDaddy’s PayPal billing agreement is useful because:

  1. Domain name doesn’t cost much (at least common TLD’s)
  2. Loosing a domain-name accidentally can be your biggest nightmare
  3. Life is unpredictable, and you never know where you will be on the last day of your domain registration period.

So automatic renewal makes sense for domains you never want to loose and for that automatic part to work, GoDaddy must have a way to get money from somewhere on your behalf! So losing around $10 accidentally is not a big loss, when

The only thing I don’t like about the whole situation at GoDaddy is, they don’t make things clear (for obvious reasons).

Same is the case with many other service providers who ask you to opt-in for PayPal Billing Agreement or automatic subscription renewal.

Overall, I like the feature but knowing PayPal steps to cancel pre-approved payment is a good thing.

Do let us know if you ever lost some bucks when you forgot to cancel billing agreement or your subscription in time?

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18 thoughts on “How to Cancel PayPal Billing Agreement or Automatic Renewal”

  1. Jorbo

    Hi, do you know how to re-activate subscription? i want to pay some invoice for my server..

    Thanks

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      Hey Jorbo,
      Try this. this should work

      Log in to your PayPal account.
      Click “Profile.”
      Click “Update” next to “My preapproved payments” on the “My Money” tab.
      Select the merchant whose agreement you want to reactivate and click “Reactivate.”

  2. NyHunt

    Hi,

    I am a merchant on Paypal with a subscription based website. Recently though I’ve shifted away from Paypal and started using Stripe because I like the platform better. I am no longer offering subscriptions through paypal. However, I still have current customers who are paying via paypal from back when that subscription was available.

    My question for you is if I cancel my paypal monthly billing (I pay them $60 a month for reoccurring payment dashboard), will it still charge the existing customers? Do you know? I have emailed Paypal but so far no word back.

    I would think I could cancel the paypal charge but still receive the payments since they were set up previously. I have no intention to offer subscriptions via paypal in the future which is my desire to cancel. Any insight you have would be greatly appreciated.

    Thank you!

  3. Odira

    Obviously there are good reasons to allow the PayPal billing agreement, but there are times that they can also be a nightmare.

    I started looking for information on how to cancel the billing agreement because I used my PayPal account to pay for 1 year hosting for a friend on GoDaddy then I realized that I have entered a billing agreement, which means that even if cancel auto renewal, my friend can still use my PayPal account for express checkout when renewing or paying for other services on GoDaddy.

  4. Prathamesh

    Do you know how to cancel pre-approve debit card payment on freelancer.com. Each month they deduct some amount from my account as a renewal fee. Thanks.

  5. Aksam Zarook

    Is it safe to use my paypal account and make payment in someone elses Godaddy acccount for him to buy say a domain name?

    I’m a web designer and I get requests from my clients sometimes to make payment with a commission for me and buy them domains/hosting/other services.

  6. Hassan

    I could not find how to cancel this automatic billing, thanks, Paypal should pay you for helping their customers know about how to do this.
    Thanks million times

  7. Rajiv JAIN

    I tried to cancel my auto payment to Pandora and went on a treasure trying to figure out how to do it. I feel the website purposefully make it difficult to figure out a method to cancel payments. Finally I did a google search, found your link and viola in a few seconds was done. Thanks for this post.

  8. VCETC

    Thank you so much, I wasted a lot of time searching for this information and then found your post!

  9. ivan

    Thanks for this article it helps a lot

    I had just canceled my godaddy renewal process

  10. Bloodygodaddy

    I also facing this situation now, I am requesting a dispute case on this automatic charge transaction of godaddy. Anyone can tell me whether is it possible to my money chargeback? Thanks in advance.

  11. Simon

    Step 3 is already outdated. The page doesn’t look like that anymore. It is even more difficult now to cancel preapproved payments to godaddy.

  12. Hanekira

    Thank you for this information, I also was trying to prevent a recurring charge from Skype every 3 months, when trying to cancel the subscription from the Skype Account Management it told me to cancel it from PayPal. PayPal was too confusing with this information and I couldn’t find it anywhere, hence I was about to give PayPal a call when I decided to give Google Search a try 🙂 Thank you for this information you saved my pocket.

  13. Dan

    How do I cancel a Billing Agreement?

    Question :
    Answer :
    We’re introducing a new and improved Profile to some customers. Until all customers are using the new Profile, there are 2 sets of instructions on how to do this. Please follow the instructions that match what you see on the site.

    Use the following steps to cancel a Billing Agreement:

    1. Log in to your PayPal account.
    2. Click Profile at the top of the page.
    3. Click the Pay List link in the Financial Information column. (Don’t see this step? Follow the instructions below.)
    4. Find the merchant whose agreement you want to cancel.
    5. Click the merchant’s name or email address.
    6. Click Cancel.

    Or

    1. Log in to your PayPal account.
    2. Click Profile at the top of the page.
    3. Click My money.
    4. Click Update in the My preapproved payments section.
    5. Select the merchant’s name or email address.
    6. Click Cancel.

  14. michelle

    Thank you so much for posting this! I’ve been having money taken from my account once per month for the past 4 months and I have never been able to figure out why. Thanks to this, I found out I still had a billing agreement with Skype and they were taking money even though I no longer use it! This is much appreciated!

  15. Torley

    THANK YOU, PayPal’s own site made it so hard to find this! I was trying to cancel a billing agreement with Skype and Skype didn’t provide a link. I googled and your page showed up near the top.

    1. Abhishek

      thanks for this article. I really wonder how websites like freelancer.com can be so misleading when it comes about payment. They never showed or asked for auto renewal option. I, by chance went deeply into Paypal account where I found the merchant Freelancer autorised for an auto renewal! Damn! Cancelled it in flash

  16. Bela

    Godaddy pulled some mony from my account today – I don’t like this.
    I cancelled the “agreement”.
    Thanks for the article, very useful!!!

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