To revoke a recurring payment authorization on a bank account, tell your bank at least three business days before the next scheduled withdrawal and separately notify the company in writing that its permission is withdrawn. For a credit card, cancel with the merchant and, if charges keep coming, dispute them with your card issuer as a billing error. One thing to hold in mind through all of this: stopping the payment does not cancel the contract you signed, so you may still owe the underlying debt.
Stopping a Recurring ACH Withdrawal From Your Bank Account
Regulation E gives you the right to stop a preauthorized electronic fund transfer by notifying your bank, orally or in writing, at least three business days before the next scheduled transfer.1eCFR. 12 CFR 1005.10 – Preauthorized Transfers You don’t need the company’s cooperation. Your bank cannot refuse a timely request.
If you place the stop-payment order by phone, the bank can require you to send written confirmation within 14 days. When you call, the bank must tell you about that requirement and give you the address to mail it to. Miss the 14-day window and the oral order lapses.1eCFR. 12 CFR 1005.10 – Preauthorized Transfers This is where people commonly get caught — they call, the withdrawal doesn’t hit that month, and they assume it’s handled. Then the confirmation never gets sent and the charges start again.
Some banks charge a fee for a stop-payment order. The amount varies by institution and some have eliminated it. Check your fee schedule before you call.
Also Notify the Company
Beyond the stop-payment order at your bank, tell the company directly that you are revoking its authorization to debit your account. Use a traceable method: certified mail, or a documented customer service ticket you can screenshot. This step isn’t legally required to stop the payment at the bank level, but it matters for what happens next in the ACH system.
When your bank returns a debit because you revoked authorization, it uses return code R07, and the company cannot reinitiate that debit. When the bank returns it as a simple stop payment, return code R08, the company may attempt the charge again if it believes it still has valid authorization. Doing both — revoking with the company in writing and placing the stop-payment order with your bank — closes both routes. That’s the only unavoidable dash in this article; the pattern to follow is the two-step, not the punctuation.
Stopping a Recurring Credit Card Charge
Credit card recurring charges are not governed by Regulation E. Your protections come from the Fair Credit Billing Act and Regulation Z, which apply to open-end credit accounts.2Federal Trade Commission. Fair Credit Billing Act
Start with the merchant. Cancel the subscription or service directly and keep the confirmation. If charges continue after you’ve canceled, dispute them with your card issuer as a billing error. Under Regulation Z, a charge for goods or services you didn’t accept, or that weren’t delivered as agreed, qualifies as a billing error, and you must notify your card issuer in writing within 60 days of the statement that first shows the disputed charge.3eCFR. 12 CFR Part 226 – Truth in Lending (Regulation Z) – Section 226.13 While the issuer investigates, it cannot report the disputed amount as delinquent or take any action that damages your credit.
Many card issuers also let you block a specific merchant through their online portal or mobile app. Federal law doesn’t require this feature, so availability depends on the issuer. If the merchant and issuer can’t resolve the dispute, Regulation Z lets you withhold payment on the disputed amount when the charge exceeds $50 and you first made a good-faith attempt to resolve it with the merchant.4eCFR. 12 CFR Part 226 – Truth in Lending (Regulation Z) – Section 226.12(c)
Revoking the Payment Does Not Cancel the Contract
This is the single biggest trap. Stopping the money from leaving your account does nothing to the underlying agreement you signed. The CFPB is explicit: “cancelling your automatic payment does not cancel your contract with the company.”5Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. How Do I Stop Automatic Payments From My Bank Account?
If it’s a gym or streaming membership, cancel the membership through the company’s cancellation process. If it’s a loan payment, you still owe the money and need to pay through another method. Skipping this step can lead to late fees, default, credit damage, and collections. Some contracts also carry early termination fees you’d owe regardless of how the payments stopped.
Sequence matters. Cancel the contract first, then revoke the payment authorization. If you revoke the payment without canceling the contract, the company may keep treating you as an active customer, keep billing on paper, and eventually route those charges to a debt collector.
If the Bank Lets a Payment Through After You Stopped It
If you gave a proper stop-payment order at least three business days before the transfer and the bank processed the payment anyway, the bank is liable for your losses.6eCFR. 12 CFR Part 205 – Electronic Fund Transfers (Regulation E) – Section 205.10 Contact your bank right away and file an error notice.
Under Regulation E’s error resolution procedures, the bank has 10 business days to determine whether an error occurred and must report its findings within three business days of finishing the investigation. It can extend the investigation to 45 days, but only if it provisionally credits your account within the first 10 business days and gives you full use of the funds while it works.7Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. 12 CFR 1005.11 – Procedures for Resolving Errors If the bank ultimately finds no error, it can reverse the provisional credit, but it must tell you when and how much, and honor checks and preauthorized payments from your account for five business days after the reversal so you aren’t blindsided by overdrafts.
Watch Your Account, and Know the Reporting Deadlines
After revoking, monitor your account for at least two full billing cycles. If unauthorized charges keep going through, Regulation E’s liability tiers make prompt reporting worth real money:
- Report within 2 business days of discovering the problem, and your liability is capped at $50, or the amount of unauthorized transfers before you notified the bank, whichever is less.
- Report after 2 business days but within 60 days of your statement, and your liability can rise to $500.
- Wait longer than 60 days from when the bank sent the statement, and you can be liable for the full amount of unauthorized transfers that occur after that 60-day window, with no cap.
These tiers apply when an access device such as your account number has been compromised, but they show why timing matters for any unauthorized charge.8eCFR. 12 CFR 1005.6 – Liability of Consumer for Unauthorized Transfers If something like a hospital stay kept you from reporting on time, the bank must extend these deadlines to a reasonable period. State law or your account agreement may also set lower liability limits than the federal default.
Keep copies of everything: the stop-payment request, the merchant’s cancellation confirmation, and any emails or letters that go back and forth. If a dispute escalates, that paper trail is the difference between getting your money back and arguing from memory.