Final will do it. They allow you to create a card for each payee, which you can cancel at any time.
(I have a card, but am not otherwise affiliated with them.)
(I have a card, but am not otherwise affiliated with them.)
For example, people regularly cancel cards or move and assume "the gym will figure it out" only to discover two years later that that $20/month bill is now a $600+ bill and they're being hounded by a collections agency.
Credit scores make this even more risky (if you care about such things).
Example: if you stop your gym membership with PayPal, the gym's membership system will either be notified that your membership has been cancelled, or they will do some periodic check to see who has an active membership and update from that.
If you stop your payments going through on a credit/debit card, it's essentially the same as having no money in your account, or your card being stopped because it's stolen. There's no communication back down the channel, you just can't bill it. As a result your membership starts to go into the red, which is usually allowed for a period because of payment issues. When they contact you with a bill months later they have every right to claim that money because you never ended the membership and could have been using the gym during that time. It is usually only through wanting good customer satisfaction that they might waive the fees for that period.
The only time it worked was when I was on the phone with the lady telling me that my card had expired. They wanted lots of proof I had cancelled (which was impossible, because their damned site didn't work, and it only worked the one time I was on the phone with the person... funny that).
If anyone is wondering, that company was Megapath, which bought out Speakeasy, a once-good ISP. I would never do business with them again. Ever.