Bank statement
guides & explainers

The average UK adult pays for 4 subscriptions they've forgotten about. This step-by-step guide shows you how to track them down — across your bank statements, app stores, PayPal, and email — and cancel everything you don't need.

Found a charge you didn't make? Here's the exact process: how to investigate it properly before panicking, when to contact your bank, how the chargeback process works in the UK, and how to protect yourself going forward.

AMZN MKTP US*. ROADGET BUSINESS. GGL*GSUITE. Why does your bank show a random string of letters instead of the company's name? The answer involves a 1987 payments standard, 25-character limits, and parent company billing entities.

Two completely different routes to a refund, constantly confused with each other. One is statutory and credit-card only; the other is a scheme rule that covers debit cards but expires in months. Picking the wrong one costs people refunds they were entitled to.

If a subscription bills your card rather than a Direct Debit, you can withdraw consent directly with your bank and they must comply — no merchant permission required. Includes the exact wording to use and what to do when you are refused.

Authorisation and settlement are two separate events, and the gap between them explains most alarming-but-routine charges — the £99 petrol hold, the hotel deposit, the order charged days before dispatch, and the "double charge" that is really one payment.

Those two or three characters before the merchant name identify who moved the money, not who sold you the thing — which tells you exactly which account holds your receipt. A reference table of the prefixes that appear on UK statements.