UK consumers are cutting back on subscription services but are losing money to invisible spending, such as automatic payments they forget to cancel.
In a survey of 2,000 UK adults, for its HSBC UK’s Invisible Spending campaign, the bank found that UK consumers are saving an average of £34 a month (£408 a year) by cancelling subscriptions.
The services they are most likely to cut include streaming platforms (51%), music services (30%) and delivery memberships such as Amazon Prime (29%).
However, the survey showed that the average person is still wasting £61 annually on services they no longer use but have forgotten to cancel.
Nearly half (48%) said the ease of direct debits means they often delay cancelling. Meanwhile, 43% said they keep subscriptions “just in case they might use them again.” FOMO (fear of missing out) is behind an additional 29% of consumers’ failure to act.
The survey showed that millennials (aged 29-44) cancel more subscriptions than any other group – saving £37 a month. However, they are also wasting the most, with a total of £69 lost to automatic payments.
Nearly all (95%) of those surveyed said they would be able to manage their subscriptions more effectively if their banking app clearly showed them all in one place.
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