Nov 9, 2026, 2:45 PMNew blogpost:
"New UK rules for consumer subscription contracts"
One for people who run businesses who sell subscriptions to consumers in the UK.
The detail is quite complicated, even if the principles are simple enough, and it has taken me most of my day so far to get my head around this... enjoy!
https://decoded.legal/blog/2026/11/new-uk-rules-for-consumer-subscription-contracts/
Nov 9, 2026, 2:50 PMI'd hope that services like Patreon and OnlyFans will already have this sorted, so that people using those services to offer subscriptions will not need to worry.
For people running their own subscription services / platforms, this is likely to take a bit more thinking.
I think the UK will end up like Norway. But in a bad sense.
Electronic Hardware inside Norway is really expensive and will only arrive after a certain delay. Not having access to the single EU market often means delayed access to things in general.
I fear the same will happen to the UK for all sorts of things. In your example "digital services". Many of the platforms will just outright stop supporting the UK instead of dealing with the trouble.
@neil Thanks Neil. Very interesting. How does that affect subscription software licensing. If the software is self hosted by the user and not the seller are they still offering a service? Is this just for consumers or does it also affect B2B subscriptions?
Nov 9, 2026, 3:06 PMConsumers only.
One would need to look into the detail of any particular service model but I suspect that the policy behind it applies to regular repeating payments for licensing.
Nov 9, 2026, 4:24 PM@neil I can't find any documentation to suggest that Stripe Billing - a paid-for subscription management platform - will be implementing any functionality to meet the new legislation.
A good comparison (albeit from a business with a vested interest in selling their solution to fill that gap): https://renewful.co.uk/guides/stripe-uk-subscription-rules
I would be interested in whether Stripe continues to offer Billing in the UK, if it can't be used compliantly (or whether they intend to make it compliant)
Nov 9, 2026, 4:25 PM@hugh Ooh, that's not good! But hopefully Stripe will fix it...
Nov 9, 2026, 4:32 PM@neil Otherwise I guess I have to build it 😢
@neil Thank you for the post.
At first blush it looks great until the part about exclusions. I followed the link to the act hoping to find reasoning, but was disappointed (not surprised).
I find the scale and scope of exclusions incomprehensible tbh. Utilities, Insurance, *gaming*??? What makes these any different from any other service?
Confused, as ever :-)
Nov 10, 2026, 8:47 AM> Utilities, Insurance, *gaming*??? What makes these any different from any other service?
Sector-specific regulation, which already exceeded the requirements of general consumer law.
@neil when you say exceeded, does that mean that insurance companies must also allow termination of auto-renewals?
Some do, and I try to use them but some still don't offer the choice at sign-up and require a phone call (once contracted) to change to non auto renew.
Nov 10, 2026, 8:51 AMInsurance isn't an industry I'm familiar with as a lawyer, but as a consumer, I've turned off auto-renewals on the insurance products that I have. Whether that's a regulatory requirement, or just sensible commercial practice though, I do not know.
Nov 10, 2026, 8:54 AMSector-specific regulation will not always duplicate what is in this new framework (i.e. it may not cover this particular requirement already). But I imagine that, when the sectoral regulation was next reviewed, if there were gaps which left it weaker than general consumer law, those would be addressed, unless there was a compelling sectoral reason not to do so.