Stopping a Recurring Payment on a Credit Card

A subscription taken from the account, a direct debit, is cut with the creditor or, until the end of the business day before the due date, with the bank. A subscription paid with the card details is cut first with the merchant, in writing. The two circuits have neither the same deadline nor the same remedies.

The French-language guides on this subject that I opened on 9 October 2026 described French or Canadian law, not Belgian law. Yet the law, the deadlines and even the people to contact are not the same.

Direct debit and stored card: the order does not start from the same place

In a direct debit, the creditor presents a mandate and the bank executes. Belfius puts it this way: « C'est le créancier et non la banque qui gère les domiciliations » (it is the creditor, not the bank, who manages direct debits). With a stored card, the customer has given a number and an expiry date, and the ING terms classify that communication among the payment orders given to the merchant (article 6.3). This page covers the credit card; for the debit card, the split of roles is set out in our guide credit card or debit card. The rest of the protection system lives in the pillar on credit card security.

Only the first circuit has a deadline written in the law. For the card, I found only the principle that an order is irrevocable, and no page says at what exact moment a merchant « transmits » its order.

How do you cut a direct debit before the next debit?

1. Write to the creditor to end the direct debit. Wikifin advises a registered letter and a written confirmation of the termination; Belfius offers a template letter and also recommends going through the creditor.
2. Cancel the mandate in the bank's app if it allows it (Belfius Mobile, Direct Net or terminal), then warn the creditor anyway, otherwise payment reminders arrive.
3. If a debit is imminent, ask the supplier in writing not to present it. Failing that, ask the bank to oppose it.
4. Count backwards. A direct debit can be revoked until the end of the business day before the agreed date. For a debit due on Monday 12 October 2026, the limit is Friday 9 October, the day I am writing these lines.
5. After the debit, the clock runs. Eight weeks to claim, that is until 7 December 2026 for a debit of 12 October. Thirteen months if the mandate was not valid, that is until 12 November 2027.

The sources disagree on who handles the refund. Wikifin writes that the bank refunds the last eight weeks without condition when the mandate is not valid; Belfius says to address the supplier, who must answer within ten business days; the copy of Book VII I re-read gives that ten-day period to the payer's provider (article VII.38) and makes an unconditional refund possible only if the framework contract provides for it (VII.37, §3). I address my bank first, in writing, with the creditor in copy.

Closing or replacing the card cancels no subscription

The ING terms ask, when the card contract ends, to oppose all direct debits paid with the card (article 13.4). The bank thus places subscriptions among the customer's obligations. Our page on cancelling a credit card details how to move payments, and the one on renewal covers the arrival of a new card.

No Belgian issuer page I re-read says whether the number or expiry date of a replacement card is passed on to merchants. As long as that point stays silent, I check every subscription after a card change.

Consent can be withdrawn at any time, issuers do not explain how

Article VII.27, paragraph 3, in the copy I re-read, allows consent to be withdrawn at any time, never after the moment of irrevocability. For a series of operations, the withdrawal makes « toute opération de paiement postérieure » (any later payment operation) unauthorised.

I read this text as the tool for card subscriptions: a letter to the merchant withdrawing consent to any future payment, dated and kept, turns the following debits into operations that can be contested as unauthorised. That is my reading. No issuer page I re-read confirms it, and the ING terms contain no clause specific to subscriptions. They only say that an order received can no longer be revoked (article 6.5), which closes the road for the debit already transmitted.

The eight-week period people associate with direct debits also exists in the ING terms for the card (article 10.2), but only when the authorisation did not specify the amount. A fixed-amount subscription does not fit, in my reading, whereas the direct debit offers that period without this condition. The card's refund right is therefore narrower than the account's.

I would not block my card before sending that letter. The block protects the account, but it cancels nothing: the merchant remains the creditor of a contract it considers running, and the refused payment serves as its argument.

If a debit goes through anyway, the contest follows the path described in our chargeback guide, whose Worldline form provides a « cancelled subscription » reason with dated proof of the request, within three months of the statement date (survey of 21 August 2026).

For this page I re-read only the ING contract and the Belfius page. KBC, BNP Paribas Fortis, Beobank and Argenta are not checked on this point.

What to do when the merchant still debits?

The sequel plays out in writing and in this order: the contest with the card issuer, then a complaint to the bank, then mediation. Ombudsfin handles complaints against banks, and its role and procedure are described in our glossary of law and players. To report a merchant's practice, ConsumerConnect passes breaches of consumer law to the Economic Inspectorate, which does not settle the dispute in the customer's place.

To keep before escalating:

• the termination letter or message, with its date and the merchant's reply, or its silence;
• the letter withdrawing consent to any future payment;
• the statement lines carrying the later debits;
• the timestamp of any card block in the app.

For a file already open (defaulting merchant, debt collection), the site comparer-carte-credit.be covers the aftermath.

As of 9 October 2026, none of the pages I re-read states the time within which a Belgian issuer processes a consent withdrawal.