I don’t understand how people leave subscription or renewal charges unchecked in their credit cards. I can understand keeping a subscription unused but still acknowledging and paying for it (for whatever personal reasons), but having a charge in your credit card without knowing what exactly it is or why, sounds a bit strange to me. Could be that I’m not rich enough and I’m still paying attention to every single €/$/£ being charged :-)
I'd prefer my bank to allow me to manually approve every payment, e.g. via smartphone application. It would be easy to understand, fast enough, with some options like "approve netflix forever". That would be ideal for me. And if I don't like this particular payment, just decline and move on.
Those agents who pull my money without my explicit consent every time are the reason I'm keeping my card with minimal amount of money (I don't use credit cards, only debt cards).
You're describing something called direct debit (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_debit). In the US, you may know it as ACH, but the american version of direct debit is a far cry from EU direct debits.
When setting up a DD, you can give a european company your IBAN. They will be able to make withdrawal requests, directly to your bank account. Your bank will usually give you full control on what you can do with those. For example, my bank Bunq (https://bunq.me/) allows me to accept once, or automatically accept any debit request up to whatever amount I choose per period from that same merchant.
Direct Debits are free. You bypass credit card fees (which in Europe are much lower than in the US in the first place but still percentage-based). They are also usually real-time (though slower than the credit card network, and depending on banks and fraud checks there can be latency of up to a couple of days).
There's a huge inequality between those who understand finance and those who don't. You don't get rich just by working hard. You have to understand money to get ahead. But many people are essentially afraid of money.
