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One of our most popular post series’ is How to Remove Remove Credit Card Details from Xbox Live. The upshot of it all was basically… you can’t. Not properly. We tried the website. We tried phoning them up. 53 days later, Nick’s credit details were still on his Xbox Live account.
Stories came in from everywhere about people having the credit card problems. Scott wanted to stop his son from buying MS points indiscriminately – couldn’t do it. PrincessMeri spent two years asking Microsoft to stop billing her. Mark‘s account was hacked and $247 worth of points was charged to his card. People even made complaints to Watchdog and the Better Business Bureau (sadly, with no direct response). Lots of worldwide frustration over such a simple little thing.
We are now happy to report that Microsoft have finally added an option to remove your credit card details from your Xbox account! They no longer blacklist your card and you can add it back later if you change your mind.
Editor’s Note: We’ve been updating this page as Microsoft update their site. Comments below may not be reflective of the current version. This page was last updated on 12th July 2011
Here’s how. Click on the images to see full-size versions:
- Log in to Xbox.com
- Hover over My Xbox and click on Accounts
- Click Manage Payment Options
- You should now be presented with a list of your current credit cards. Click Remove for the card you wish to remove
- Click Yes in the pop-up prompt
- And if you’re lucky, your card might be removed. Unlike mine.
Going to the Payment method information page as instructed brings me to my Microsoft billing information. This reveals that my only existing service is “Prepaid 12M Xbox Gold”.
I’ve just turned off automatic renewal for Xbox Live Gold so there shouldn’t be any payments due but it still won’t let me remove my credit card. As such, I don’t hold out much hope for anyone else. Do let me know in the comments if you manage to remove your card. Good luck!
Update January 2011: Updated instructions and screenshots again for Xbox.com’s October redesign. Also discovered that with the current version of Xbox Live, it appears that you can no longer remove all your credit cards even when your subscription has been moved to a 12 month pre-pay. I had to attach a different credit card to my account before it would let me remove the old one. Very unimpressed, Microsoft.
Update: 11th Feb 2009
We’re getting reports that some people are having trouble removing their cards. Some even think this is a fake option on the site to placate us. Trust us, it’s not. You can actually remove your card details.
As Gabe says in the comments, they may have an active subscription using their credit card that needs to be cancelled first. I switched to a pre-paid 12 month subscription a few months ago, so the theory seems to hold true. If you get a customer service rep to explain this, let us know.
Our advice, buy pre-paid cards instead:
UK Links:
- Xbox Live 12 Month Gold Membership plus 2 free months – £34.99
- Xbox Live 3 Month Gold Membership Card – £9.99
- Xbox Live 4200 Points Card – £34.99
- Xbox Live 2100 Points Card – £14.99
US Links:
- Xbox Live 12 Month Gold Membership – $49.99
- Xbox Live 3 Month Gold Membership Card – $24.95
- Xbox Live 4000 Points Card – $49.99
- Xbox Live 2100 Points Card – $19.99
ok guys … i just had a thought if microsoft will not let you remove ya card payments by this … because i am getting the same message
*this payment method cannnot be removed*
can you just go to your bank and cancel it there and stop givin microsoft the momey out of your account!? will this work or not it just a thought =)
Yes that would work but that gives you the hassel of renewing and geting a new card and that could take upto a week without using your card unless you go to the bank everytime to get some money out.
That’s how I had to do it; reported my CC lost / missing and had my CC company issue me a new CC number. I tried every method mentioned by every person on this blog and it just plain wouldn’t work. Phone call to XBL, ha!!! That was a joke; a total waste of my time. Canceled the auto renewal, read every page of this blog and tried every suggestion. Spend WAY too much time trying to figure it out. I got close to fixing the problem online, but I would have had to cancel the existing membership that I paid for with the card (and I was only one month into a one year paid membership). Luckily for me I have several CC’s and the one I had attached to XBL was a card I don’t use often. Two minutes online at my CC’s website reporting it missing, 3 days later a new card in the mail, no more charges from XBL and my one year paid membership was unaffected. I should have done this FIRST!!! It’s just pathetic that this is the route I had to take to simply remove my CC from the account. Someone needs to file a class-action lawsuit; any lawyers out there?
no that does not work. You may stop the payments but microsoft will keep billing the card. You will soon have a bill of money from them billing you. The money just stacks up practilly. You acually have to call or remove your card from microsof
I just canceled the auto renewal off. Just go to your account it’s under membership level. I love XBOXLIVE but hate their customer service & no refund policy. I’m switching to PC gaming for now they had me with the $5000 points I wasn’t able to redeem.
how did u turn the renewal of as i dnt know how too
Hey Grant,
I’ve just had a good look around the Xbox.com site. Looks like they’ve now removed that option from both the website and the console menus. You’ll have to ring them up.
it keeps sayin
An outstanding balance exists on this payment instrument. Please try again later
an i try later an it stil doesnt work what do i do ?????
Have you cancelled the auto-renewal on your account yet? That might help. Otherwise, better ring them up or contact them through the Support section of Xbox.com
I have tried several times to delet the credit card off my xbox and it wouldnt let me . one of my friends account got hacked and they spent 700$ worth of ms points. I felt bad after his parents found out=(
hey guys .. im on a month to month renewel and when i try to remove my credit card it says ad outstanding balance excsists? how do i remove it?
Hey Johnny,
Unfortunately, the only way to cancel your auto-renew these days is to call up Microsoft Support. They should also be able to remove your card.
thanx debbie im going to get on to them tomarrow
Hey guys I’ve been thinking. Ok I get it that microsoft has a hard system on removing your credit because they want to make shore that people pay their money for the xbox live month and that if the credit card cannot be charged they want you to be unable to take your credit card off untill it has been payed. But why in this time are you also not able to remove the auto renewal so they bill you every month and you can’t stop the auto renewal.
For microwsoft to really be a great company people need to be able to stop the auto renewal anytime so they are not continuly billed and also are able to stop payment to the credit card from there acount by a new created password confirmed by email of their choosing. So maybe a new email if your acount has been hacked. But then people maybe able to shut off your credit card but why if you have been hacked would that be a bad thing.
i turned off automatic renewal, but it wont let me delete the card because of the “outstanding balance” thing. im pretty sure my mom cancelled this car a long time ago and i keep getting xbox live messages saying the card isnt working. so i think im safe
it says to much of an over balance
inj order to turn auto renewal off you got to got to membership level under my accounts and scroll to the bottom. Keep clicking next until you see turn auto renwal on off click off they even offer you some banging deals like a year for 5 bucks but thats up to you…then your done.
you also have to click on the on button if its on srry i had to add that in
I closed my credit card for unrelated reasons and am currently up to 10 days of free xbox gold lets see how long it takes for them to try and get the money out of me…….I’m not paying them a dime
I had xbox live for over 3 years and im sick of getting over charged for the same things you can do on ps3 for free.I tried to remove my credit card and they charged me a 30dollar cancellation fee!? Im done with xbox.
they should atleast have the courtesy to call it bull**** i keep getting server errors or it reroutes me through eight “continue” pages which then leads to an error message AAGGH!!
If you can’t remove your credit card at xbox.com, go to https://billing.microsoft.com and log in with your Windows Live ID. Here you can transfer balance from expired card to a new credit card by selecting the expired credit card and select to transfer balance to a new card. The expired credit card will then be removed.
Hi, i too have the same problem as you all, when i sign into xbox live a message appears saying:
“There is a problem with your payment option. Please update your payment information to continue your Xbox LIVE membership.
You have two options to update your Xbox LIVE membership: edit an existing payment method or add a new one.”
It wont let me use a prepaid code or even remove my credit card details. This is honestly ridiculous, I feel like microsoft are messing us about and its so much hassle.
i too am haveing the same issues, used my brothers old card before he moved out, with permision, went and bought a timecard to switch over to when he canceled his card and the month ran out….
and now i cant do anything besides adding a new credit card or updateing the existing one.. wtf, LET ME INPUT MY DAM TIMECARD !!!!
it says on my screen update profile but i dont want to update it with credit. i want to redeem a code but it doesnt let me
I am having the same problem. I try to remove my credit card, but it keeps saying that my credit card has an outstanding balance or something. I bought a 3 Month Card and it wont let me redeem it until I remvoe the credit card
Albert (no. 11) is right I followed his directions and when in doubt kept ignoring everything and clicked next and finally was able to turn off the automatic subscription. They sure don’t make it easy to find.
My card expired = problem solved
when i go to my account on xbox.com and i go to manage account it says “uh oh, that shouldnt of happend, it appears you found a glitch in the system” its really annoying and i just want to turn my auto renewal off so i can games, someone help
it just means that your cookies are disabled from being shown…. just go to the settings of the browser and just allow cookies to show
it still doesnt work those pigs are stealing my money still. i click remove and it says “An outstanding balance exists on this payment instrument. Please try again later.” why?
and i havent bought anything
I had a problem where my old debit card was on there and it kept trying to charge it but it didnt exist. it wasn’t anything serious, just a major pain in the butt. So i went to the website and tried to delete it but it said “This payment option cannot be removed at this time. Please contact Xbox LIVE Customer Support.” So i went to https://live.xbox.com/en-US/Account then clicked on Upgrade/Manage Account and sort of “resubscribed” and choose the correct credit card for it to charge. THEN it allowed me to delete my old one. Hope this helps.
oops, it didnt say “This payment option cannot be removed at this time. Please contact Xbox LIVE Customer Support.” it said “An outstanding balance exists on this payment instrument. Please try again later.”.
my bad.
ok i am trying to get the credit card removed and it keeps saying i need to pay the baance or somthing like that
so can anyone just let me know how to change automatic renewal to off so then the problem will sort of be solved
is this right ..?
you have to update your account with a prepaid card before you can cancel your credit card ?
Not exactly, Zach. You can always phone up customer support and request they remove your card. It seems that you can’t turn off auto-renew online without providing an alternative form of payment.
Hey guys, I can’t even call the support.
It says cannot connect, please check the number and try again.
Any help?
worst customer service ever. if it wasnt for reach id be canceling my year membership right now
Okay so i took off the auto renewal and it said my live would end december 2nd… its now the 6th and i can still get onto xbox live? talk about a serious scam or mabye just free live?
Yup, it’s probably free Live. See if you can play online multiplayer – that’s most of the difference between Free and Gold.
OK I got it done myself.
1. Call the customer service make them do it. They will state you have to cancel your account before the credit card information is removed. If you cancel in the first 30 days they will still hold your information because they will refund the purchase back to your account. Of course you are angry because they are holding your credit card information and have the auto billing option on the site on the xbox360live site.
2. Go to this site http://www.gamesforwindows.com/en-US/ and act like you are going to buy something after you sign in. When it asks you to checkout, it will bring you to your credit card information screen. Luckily, there is a delete option that actually works, so you can delete your credit card information. (unlike on xbox live billing which does not work) If ever in my life I get Live again or anything with Microsoft. I will buy the store gamer card. This is too much of a hassle.
So I did the second step that you did. Though it told me it was removed and such stuff, but it says also something like your info is stored for historic reasons? WTF, will that ever go away?
gamesforwindows doesnt work in my area, sigh
I cant remove my payment card because of outstanding credit on it, could I buy a 12 month subscription from a shop and redeem the code then pay outstanding credit and remove or do I have to pay the outstanding credit before I can redeem any other memberships?
Thanks guys! this helped so much!
i have a 12 month subscription … if i cancel my credit card will it cancel my subscription also … ive had it for 3 months
Nope, you’ll still need to call Microsoft and cancel. Last time I asked at the bank they said it was something to with anti-fraud measures. No, I don’t get why either.
someone tell me please
it says i have an outstanding payment what shall i do
An outstanding balance exists on this payment instrument. Please try again later should i wait or keep trying
No longer can cancel online.
Must call their “sales” staff at 1-800-4MY-XBOX or (800) 469-9269
Have ready:
GamerTag
Last four digits of the credit card used (can be seen on the account page on your xbox)
They will try to sell you renewal offers. After finding out how to cancel online, and already having what was needed, it was a 20 minute sales call. (The email I tried to cancel with lead to simply stated “I would like to turn to automatic renewal off.” The return email stated, “Be advised that by cancelling the account, you will lose any remaining time on the service in addition to your gamertag and game rankings.” Not true, but should they be threatening to delete services provided with the xBox Live Silver (free)?
Canceling could be as easy as not having to auto-renew.
Canceling could be as easy as turning off the auto-renew button on the xBox.
Knowing the account info last time, I was able to cancel online in less than two minutes.
This is not a business practice that should continue to spread.
Please help others by reporting this act to your consumer protection agencies.
Feel free to record the call for youtube.
US citizens, I reported to the FTC. You don’t need to give out any information, just let them know your experience with canceling.
https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/
Just wanted to chime in and say that I’m getting the same outstanding balance message on the credit card that is on our account–but we’ve never used it to pre-pay for Live. We’ve always used the store card. I used the credit card one time to buy some kind of upgrade for my son and now I can’t renew his Live account with a pre-paid card because I “owe” on the credit card. Come on, it’s a credit card for goodness sakes. There’s no such thing as an outstanding balance to a vendor on a credit card. The only business you owe an outstanding balance to on a CC is the CC company itself. WTH are they trying to pull this time?
thanks for the guide – i used it!
Beforehand I was doing this via a slightly different route, and getting errors from their crappy website. Seems ok via this method.
Thanks baz. Glad to see this helped you out :)
What the…I need call X box live’s Support? But I’m deaf and I can’t even talk on phone…
Same issues here:
Cust service tried to sell me stuff for 20 min. When I forced them to change the renewel they billed me $230, then removed it except for 10Cents which binds up the credit card.
Summary for 1/14/2011 – 2/13/2011
Beginning balance: $0.00
Purchases/Fees: $231.95
Payments/Credits: ($231.85)
Current balance: $0.10
This is a strong arm crime XBOX is doing by not being able to to turn off this Auto feature.. there raking in millions.. going to call my congress or governer.. its stealing..I used a credit card to join the membership .. not to have all types of charges added to it. and they dont let you delete it or remove the auto feature…
xbox is sooo fucking gay it wont let me change when i click change payment options it says there has been a glitch! and it wont let me change it!
If I deleat the profile will the credit card be deleted also ?? Please Respond
No deleting the gamertag will not delete the credit card details.Tried once before as well still being billed.My problem is I cannot remember my gamertag name or sign in details so xbox live will do nothing for me.They are still billing my debit card even though it is expired.
I just called my CC co. and had all xbox purchases blocked.
g/f’s son keeps making unauthorized purchases…
Will this prevent xbox from any further charging the card or will it bind up the credit card in any way??
This payment option cannot be removed at this time. how am i meant to remove this credit card, ive turned off autorenewal by calling xbox live support and even now it wont delete, could someone please tell me how
I feel I was tricked into signing up for monthly payments, I thought I would try it out as they offered me a month for 99p, thought that was a good price to just try it out, should have read the small print :(
Anyway, tried removing my card details but as others pointed out it says outstanding balance(strange as I thought you paid monthly in advance!) kept looking around and found a way to pay the outstanding balance, went back to remove card details, but still they will not let me!!!! The only way is to call their special number, and from what I have read its no help, they want all different details and even after that I saw loads of people were still being charged!
But this is where I got sneaky ;)
If you have a paypal account you can pay monthly with that, so once you have added your paypal details you can then delete your other card details, what’s the point in that? Well, log into paypal and delete that payment.
My last email from them :)
We are contacting you because we have been unable to charge your PayPal Account for your Gold – 1 Month service(s) being billed to you through Microsoft Online Services. The following PayPal Account is the current payment method on your billing account:
PayPal Account: ********************************
PayPal Billing Agreement Id: *************************************
To avoid an interruption of your services or to reactivate suspended service(s), please provide a valid PayPal Account. If payment is due for other Microsoft services purchased with the above PayPal Account, those services may also be affected.
To check pricing details, and to confirm your account information and payment options, go to: https://billing.microsoft.com
If you have already resolved this issue, please disregard this notice and accept our thanks.
Thank you for using Microsoft Online Services.
Xbox LIVE Team
everytime i try it says i found a glitch in the website
Thank You ^-^
it wont let me remove mine it says, an outstanding balance exists on this instrument, help!!
same lucas, what do i do
When I press “remove credit card info” it says that I can’t because an “outstanding balance exists”, please help/