Mastercard’s trial protection only applies to physical goods

Mastercard has issued a clarification over its misleading announcement yesterday that it will only be protecting users from trials of physical products such as skincare, healthcare items etc. This means, contrary to our prior assumption, users will not be protected from trials of digital services.

Generally, when we are availing a trial feature, to confirm that the person is of legal age and not a robot, your credit card information is required. After the free trial period ends and you haven’t manually canceled your subscription, automatically billing kicks in and it starts charging your card based upon the criteria set by the service provider.

Previously, the blog post stated as per The Verge:

The blog post now states:

No one wants to be unsatisfied with a physical product after paying for it. For some consumers, a free-trial is a great way to test out a new product and get comfortable with it before making a purchasing decision. And with so many merchants offering free product trials, they’re becoming the new norm.

It’s quite a bummer really considering when the word trial comes to mind, we would naturally consider a digital service like Netflix or others. However, according to a Mastercard spokesperson, users have mostly complained about trials of physical products that is why they have introduced this feature.

Did you want Mastercard’s trial protection to be limited to physical products?