Mullvad VPN drops option to create new recurring payments

Swedish VPN service Mullvad announced that it will no longer accept new recurring payments using PayPal or credit card payments. Nothing changes for existing customers for at least 6 months. The company continues to accept one-time payments using various payment options, including PayPal, cash and credit card.

Mullvad VPN, which provides the backbone for Mozilla's Firefox VPN service, explains, that it decided to remove the ability to create new recurring payments in order to store less data on company servers.

The company has to store payment information for a limited time, as refunds and the ability to restore account access are linked to payment records. One-time payments do not need to be kept indefinitely, but that is not the case for recurring payments. Records of these payments need to be kept for the entirety of the subscription period, and that is a privacy issue.

While convenient, recurring payments link a user's identity to the VPN account. The removal of recurring payment subscriptions at Mullvad VPN remove the link, as payment records are not kept for longer than "the first few weeks" according to Mullvad.

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