Trim Helps You Find Online Subscriptions

I remember the days when you bought a software license, got a CD, and installed the software on your computer. These days, it’s more common to buy access to the program based on a monthly subscription fee.

Do you remember all the subscriptions you are paying for?

It can be difficult keeping track of all the services and sites I pay for every month. I suspect I am not alone. In fact, I think many sites that use recurring billing benefit from the fact that people simply forget they signed up.

That is where a new service called Trim just might help.

When you give Trim access to your bank and credit card account activity, it analyzes and locates the monthly repeating charges you are paying, then offers to cancel them for you. The company says it checks back three months.

I signed up for Trim to try out the service and checked the results against a review of my bank and credit card statements. Trim did pretty well. It found all of the memberships that bill at the same time every month.

To test the service, I signed up at the company’s website, providing information including my bank account username and password, and my cell phone number. Trim uses text messaging for communication. A short while later, Trim text messaged me a list of recurring account charges. To cancel an account, you text back the word “cancel” and the name of the account.

And yes, some people will be uncomfortable forking over bank account credentials to a startup company. However, the founders assure users that your information is kept safe and secure. Trim also uses two-factor authentication (a verification code texted to your phone) to log into your account on their site.

“These credentials never touch our servers, nor are they stored by us in any way,” the company explains on its website. “Your credentials are sent through Intuit or Plaid to your bank or credit card provider, which sends back an encrypted token to us.”

As with many startups, the idea for Trim grew from a personal experience. “We had the idea for Trim after looking at our own credit card bills,” Petkevich said. “Thomas (co-founder and CEO Thomas Smyth) had subscriptions to Hulu and Vimeo, neither of which he used.”

Even if you decide not to use Trim to find your monthly or quarterly subscriptions, it certainly might be a good practice to review your bank account and credit card account statements to make sure you want to continue to pay for services you may have signed up for in the past.

What do you use to keep track of your online subscriptions? Let me know.