If you’re using a debit card anyway, Privacy dot com is what you should use to solve this problem, and many others relating to your authority to control access to your funds. (You can pick when the generated numbers stop working, pause them at will, limit amounts etc.)

I don’t use it extensively because I’m a credit card points nerd and the only fee-free way to use it is to pull from checking with ACH. But I do use it when I’m suspicious that a business will make it hard for me to cancel.

As a bonus, you don’t need to use a real name and address — it’ll pass those checks as correct with any name or address you make up.

Note: I’m not a paid endorser or anything - I do use a free account personally.

The business is using a card account updater. All of the card networks offer this service and most issuing banks participate.

This is an extremely popular feature with both consumers and merchants as most of the time card payment changes (card reissues, expiration etc) causes unwanted disruption. You happen to be in the minority who dislike it.

Your issuing banks is who you need to take this up with, the payment processor is acting on their behalf in this case.

This is commonplace. Banks allow it to avoid subscriptions failing where the customer hasn't updated their card. Merchants may also be able to get the updated card details from the bank.

What you can do instead is get an account that lets you create virtual credit cards that you can later cancel and destroy. This should prevent any future charges going through.

Some merchants are more adept at this than others. I had a Wordpress plugin (Elementor Pro) manage to charge me despite an expired card to my fury. While another SaaS (Webflow) couldn't manage the same while trying to charge the expired card 5 times (and mailing 20 times).

When some of my banks issue a new card in case of loss, they keep either the same numbers (except for the expiry date or verification code) or do slight changes (last 4 numbers)

Subscriptions linked to any of these cards fail to renew, so it seems this works differently from renewed cards you receive when the original is expired or about to expire.

Maybe this is just how banks treat cards in my country, but have you seen this work elsewhere?

Weird. What is the expiration date for, then?

I set my card balance to zero.