Online services will be required to send push notifications about the withdrawal of funds for a subscription

The State Duma is developing a bill that will oblige online services (online movie theaters, music streaming, etc.) to report the debiting of funds for a subscription using push notifications. The document is planned to be submitted to the State Duma before the end of the spring session, writes Kommersant, citing two sources. The information was also confirmed by the author of the bill, United Russia deputy Anton Nemkin.

Interlocutors in the IT market reported that on March 9, a meeting of representatives of Yandex was held at the ANO Tsifrovaya ekonomika, VTB, Sberbank, the Center for Strategic Research and the author of the initiative, during which a new version of the bill was discussed. According to a source familiar with the new version, it made a “fundamental change” for online services.

On the development of the Vedomosti document wrote back in March 2022. Initially, it said that the company should send a notice to the client about the impending write-off. It was assumed that the push message should also contain a link by which the user can unsubscribe from a paid subscription.

In the new version, the requirement was relaxed: now the notification should contain a link to the user agreement and other information about the subscription instead of the opt-out button.

Another source of the newspaper noted that the discussion of the project was delayed due to “serious opposition from business.” Companies feared that the unsubscribe button would deprive them of consumers who, for example, signed up for a trial period and then forgot to unsubscribe. Nemkin said that in connection with this, the bill was seriously revised, but a number of services still insist that they may not warn customers about future write-offs.

Oleg Pavlov, head of the Public Consumer Initiative, noted that many companies already send notifications to subscribers, but a fifth of consumers do not receive such messages, which makes it difficult to track paid subscriptions and cancel them after the trial period.

At the same time, a source in the IT market believes that the bill could harm online services. Another interviewee at a large IT company estimated that push notifications could increase unsubscribe rates by 15-20%.