How to Cancel Recurring PayPal Payments

PayPal groups its ongoing charges under a few names you'll see used interchangeably: automatic payments, pre-approved payments, billing agreements, and subscriptions. According to PayPal, an automatic payment lets you "save PayPal as your preferred way to pay with a merchant, including for any transactions scheduled in advance." In practice, that is the standing permission a business uses to charge you every month, quarter, or year without asking again.

It helps to separate two things. The first is the billing agreement stored inside your PayPal account — the permission itself. The second is the subscription or membership you hold with the merchant (a streaming service, gym, software plan, and so on). Removing the PayPal agreement tells PayPal to stop funding that business. It does not, by itself, close your account with the merchant.

One more distinction matters. Some subscriptions you pay "with PayPal" are actually billed straight to a linked card, or are billed by an app store, rather than routed through a PayPal billing agreement. Those may not appear in your Automatic Payments list, so if you can't find a charge there, see the troubleshooting section below.

On a computer, sign in to your account at PayPal.com and follow these steps, using PayPal's current menu labels:

1. Click the Settings (gear) icon near the top of the page. 2. Select Payments. 3. Click Automatic Payments — in newer accounts this section is labeled "Subscriptions and saved businesses." 4. Choose the merchant whose payments you want to stop. 5. Select Cancel (or Cancel automatic payments) and confirm your choice.

Once confirmed, the merchant's status should change to reflect that the agreement is cancelled or inactive. Most cancellations take effect immediately, but a few merchants process the change at the end of the current billing cycle, so check the on-screen status message. If the current period has already been charged, cancelling stops future payments but does not automatically trigger a refund for the charge that already went through.

The mobile app follows the same path with slightly different navigation:

1. Open the PayPal app and tap your profile picture or the Settings icon. 2. Tap Payments (or Automatic Payments / "Subscriptions and linked businesses"). 3. Tap the merchant you want to stop paying. 4. Tap Cancel automatic payments and confirm.

App menus are updated frequently, so the exact wording may differ slightly between versions. If you don't see an Automatic Payments option in the app, sign in through a mobile or desktop browser instead — the website reliably exposes the full Settings > Payments > Automatic Payments path.

Removing the billing agreement stops PayPal from sending money, but the merchant may still consider your subscription active — and some merchants can attempt to collect through another payment method or continue an unpaid balance. To fully end the service, contact the merchant directly and cancel your subscription or membership through their own account settings or support channel.

This mirrors general consumer guidance. As the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau notes, "Cancelling an automatic payment does not cancel what you owe" — you may still need to formally cancel your contract with the company. Cancelling on both sides, PayPal and the merchant, is the reliable way to make sure charges stop and you aren't left with obligations you didn't intend to keep.

If a subscription doesn't appear under Automatic Payments, it is probably billed a different way. Charges made through the Apple App Store or Google Play must be cancelled in those systems: use Apple's "View, change, or cancel your subscriptions" settings, or Google Play's "Cancel, pause, or change a subscription" controls, even if PayPal is the funding source. Subscriptions charged straight to a card you keep on file with the merchant are cancelled with that merchant.

If charges continue after you've cancelled, contact your bank or card issuer. The CFPB advises that you can "take away your permission for the company to take automatic payments," tell your bank you have revoked authorization, and, if needed, ask for a stop payment order — an instruction telling your bank not to pay a specific company. Watch your statements and report any payment made after you revoked permission right away.

As a last resort, you can dispute an unauthorized or unexpected charge. Within PayPal, open the transaction and use the Report a Problem / Resolution Center option; for card-funded charges, your issuer's dispute process applies. Keep dated screenshots of your cancellation confirmations in case you need to show that you cancelled on time.