Your auto-reload cancellation rights

Auto-reload is a recurring charge — and you have strong, specific legal protections when you sign up for one. Here's exactly what those protections look like, and how ReloadCard implements them.

The short version

You can cancel auto-reload anytime, from your wallet, with no fees and no waiting period. Cancellation takes effect immediately for all future cycles. We confirm cancellation by email within minutes.

That's the whole thing. No phone trees, no "save offers," no required justification. Two taps in your wallet and it's off.

The legal floor

ReloadCard auto-reload is governed by overlapping federal and state laws. Wherever you live in the US, at least one of these applies — and we honour the most consumer-friendly version everywhere.

Federal: CARD Act § 1693l-1

The federal Credit CARD Act of 2009 covers recurring charges initiated against a payment method on file. Two clauses matter for auto-reload:

Affirmative consent — we cannot start a recurring charge unless you explicitly authorize it. We capture that consent at the moment you tap Activate auto-reload on Step 3 of the setup wizard, with a timestamp and the disclosed amount + cadence. The disclosure is shown directly above the button so there's no question what you're agreeing to.

Advance notice before involuntary termination — if your gift card is approaching its expiry date and we have to cancel auto-reload to prevent charging you for balance you can't use, we send a 7-day pre-cancellation notice. The notice tells you the date, why we're cancelling, and how to keep the card alive (top up, which usually resets the expiry clock).

California: Automatic Renewal Law (ARLA)

Cal. Bus. & Prof. Code § 17602. Three requirements:

Clear and conspicuous disclosure of the recurring nature of the charge before checkout. (Step 3 of our wizard, right above the activate button.)
Affirmative consent to the specific terms. (Tapping the button.)
An easy, online cancellation mechanism — and it must be at least as easy to cancel as it was to sign up. We meet this by exposing cancel as a one-tap action on the same screen where you originally enabled auto-reload.

ARLA also bans "negative-option" rollovers and dark-pattern retention flows. We don't run any of those.

New York: General Business Law § 527

NY GBL § 527 closely mirrors California ARLA. Same clear-disclosure standard, same affirmative-consent requirement, same easy-cancellation rule. New York additionally requires the merchant to send a renewal notice before each cycle once you've been on auto-reload for more than a year — we send a heads-up email three days before each scheduled charge anyway, which more than satisfies it.

Illinois: Automatic Contract Renewal Act

815 ILCS 601. Same family of rules: disclosure, consent, easy-online cancel. Illinois adds a statutory damages floor for non-compliance, which gave us extra reason to keep the cancel button as obvious as possible.

Other states

A growing list of states (Oregon, Vermont, North Dakota, Connecticut, Florida, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Colorado, Virginia) have passed their own auto-renewal statutes. We treat the highest-bar version — California — as the floor everywhere.

What cancellation actually does

When you tap Cancel auto-reload in your wallet:

The next scheduled charge is removed immediately. No charge runs after the cancellation timestamp.
Your existing card balance is untouched. You keep it and can spend it normally.
You get a confirmation email within a few minutes.
Any active in-flight charge that was already mid-network at the moment of your tap will complete (these are sub-second windows in practice — we'd rather not strand a charge mid-flight than retroactively reverse it).
If the merchant offered an enable-auto-reload bonus and you cancel within the first 3 cycles, the unspent portion of the bonus credit may be reduced. Your own funded balance is never touched. (Full bonus rules in Auto-reload bonus terms.)

Auto-reload FAQ — the ten questions we get asked most often
Auto-reload bonus terms — bonus eligibility and the clawback rule
Auto-reload AML policy — why we monitor cumulative spend
Privacy Policy — what we share with Stripe to make recurring billing work
Terms of Service §5.8 — full Auto-reload contract terms