Urgent: You must comply with these new Visa rules by April 18th

This is an urgent message for all product vendors, especially those of you who are already selling recurring products with trial offers.

In order to create greater transparency for customers, Visa has just announced new rules for free trials and introductory pricing that is part of an ongoing subscription service.

These rules come into effect on Saturday, April 18th and they must be adhered to from day one!

The good news is that here at JVZoo we are 100% on top of this and we’ve already implemented the necessary changes. You don’t have to do anything and in reality, most of our users won’t even notice any difference.

However… we do realize that many of our members use more than one affiliate network. If you are one of them, please double-check that your other network(s) also adhere to the new rules. The last thing we want is to see you getting burned by something that is easily preventable.

So… what are the new rules?

Visa now requires that customers give express consent before you start them on a trial subscription that leads into a recurring payment plan. But only if it’s a free trial or an introductory price that is lower than the recurring charges that follow. They also require you to give the customer better information in transaction receipts and to make it easier for them to cancel their trial or subscription. You can read all the details here.

Some of the payment solutions we offer at JVZoo have already implemented these changes on their end. This includes PayPal, Bluesnap or Zift.

But if you are selling subscription offers with a trial, using either Stripe or your own merchant account, you and your customers will experience the following changes.

1. They will see a checkbox on the checkout page asking them to acknowledge that they are aware the first payment is less and that it will increase to whatever recurring billing you charge
2. The receipt we email to them will have additional information on the trial, future subscription payments and on how they can easily cancel it.
3. As the vendor you will also receive a notification when someone checks the box on the checkout page, agreeing to the trial and subscription. This information will help you to more easily fight any disputes.

If someone asks JVZoo to cancel a trial subscription, we will direct them to the merchant’s own support. 

However please note that in order to stay fully compliant with Visa, the merchants must provide an easy online way to cancel the trial with NO hoops to jump through. They will lose any disputes that arise if they skip this step.

That’s it… as you can see we have taken care of this for you. These changes are already in effect and as such JVZoo AND your trial offers are in full compliance with the new Visa rules.

But again… if you are using other channels or affiliate networks to sell your products, please double check that these are compliant with the new changes too. Better safe than sorry!

Have a Great Day!
Your JVZoo Team