Stopping automatic payments: A guide to canceling auto pay

Using automatic payments can take the stress out of remembering to pay your bills on time. But what happens when you need to change your payment method or cancel it altogether? Though it’s possible to stop automatic payments, there are a few key steps you’ll need to follow. 

Key takeaways

• You can cancel automatic payments processed through your bank and your credit card issuer, but the process may vary depending on the bank or credit card company you’re working with.

• If you’re worried about an upcoming automatic payment, you could contact your bank or credit card issuer and initiate a stop payment order while you’re working on canceling future automatic payments.

• Capital One credit cardholders can easily manage their automatic payments and make any necessary changes to authorization through the Capital One Mobile app.

Automatic or recurring payments are a simple way to pay your recurring bills directly from your bank account or with a credit card. Once scheduled, those payments will recur based on a set schedule, so you don’t need to sign in and make payments each billing cycle. This can be helpful for monthly expenses like streaming subscriptions, utilities, loan payments, rent payments and more. 

There are a few different ways you may be able to stop or alter your automatic payments, such as:

Check your billing and payment information associated with your account and review your current authorized payments. You may be able to do this through a website, an app or a customer portal. Identify the payment account your automatic payments are coming from, which may be a credit card or bank account. Adjust or remove the payment account. If you want to confirm the change, contact the company directly via chat, phone or email. 

You can also stop your automatic payments with your bank. To initiate the process, you could call or email your bank or credit union and let them know that you’re revoking authorization for auto pay for a specific service provider or company. They should be able to stop the next payment from going through but may ask you to complete some additional steps.

If you’re worried about an automatic payment going through when you’re not ready, you could contact your bank or credit card provider and issue a stop payment order. This order effectively tells your bank not to approve any payments to a specific service provider. Many banks will ask that you contact them with this type of request at least a few days before your payment is due. Some services can initiate payments early, so contacting your bank as soon as possible may reduce your risk of the payment going through.

These orders may not be a permanent way to stop automatic payments with a specific service provider. Capital One’s electronic stop payment orders are valid for six months. You’ll want to speak with your bank or credit card issuer for more information about their policies and what you can do to stop automatic payments permanently.

If you’re using your credit card for automatic payments, you may want to use a mobile app to help you monitor the payments you’re currently making. 

If you have a Capital One credit card, you can access a full suite of subscription management tools directly within the Capital One Mobile app for no additional charge. With our subscription management tools, you’ll be able to see which services are using your Capital One credit card for recurring and automatic payments. From there, you can block future charges or even cancel unwanted automatic payments from select merchants, right within the app.^*

Keep in mind that the Capital One Mobile app’s subscription management features only work with Capital One credit cards. If you’re using cards from other issuers for any of your automatic payments, you’ll need to reach out to those card issuers to revoke authorization.

Here are a few frequently asked questions about stopping automatic payments.

Canceling your automatic payments is doable, but the process you’ll need to follow will largely be dictated by your bank or credit card issuer. Capital One credit cardholders can block or cancel certain automatic payments associated with their cards right through the Capital One Mobile app.