Credit cards make it so easy to buy things, almost too easy sometimes. Combine credit cards with late night shopping on too little sleep, and you just might order something you regret.

One thing you might be tempted to sign up for with the help of your credit card and a wi-fi connection is a free trial. There are numerous companies who make it easy to sample their products and services through free trials. Amazon Prime and Hulu are two that jump to mind.

While free trials are not scams, they are clever sales techniques. Obviously, the companies that offer free trials are hoping that you’ll love the free service so much that you won’t want to cancel and will continue to pay for the service after the trial has ended.

Sometimes that happens, but sometimes, let’s be honest, we sign up for free trials simply because they’re free, not because we actually want to keep the service indefinitely. Sure, we’ve been sucked into paying for Amazon Prime because it’s hard to say no to 2-day shipping and included music, TV shows and movies, but initially, we thought, a free trial sounds great.

In the example above, we decided to keep paying for the service even though we originally signed up thinking we’d cancel before the trial ended. We chose not to cancel.

Let’s be honest again, shall we. We don’t always have the best memory. Sometimes we simply forget that a free trial is about to expire. Companies are counting on that too. If you’re not looking at your credit card statement closely, you may not even notice when they start charging you.

There are even companies out there that make it more difficult than it should be to cancel a free trial. Even if you remember your trial is going to expire and go to cancel it before the deadline, you may have hoop after hoop to jump through.

Mastercard wants to help solve the free trial problem. First of all, to fix our forgetfulness problem, Mastercard is now making it mandatory for companies that offer free trials to send a text or email to remind the customer when the trial is about to end. According to Mastercard, these “merchants will be required to send the cardholder – either by email or text – the transaction amount, payment date, merchant name along with explicit instructions on how to cancel a trial.”

Not only that, but the companies are also required to text or email customers a receipt every time there is a new transaction. So, if your credit card is being charged monthly, you should get a new text or email every month letting you know.

Mastercard is even going a step further by including the merchant’s website or phone number on credit card statements so that you can easily contact them if you don’t understand what the charge is.

Mastercard states that “The new rules will help in increase transparency and ensure an outstanding experience for cardholders. In addition to these changes, Mastercard cardholders are also covered by our Zero Liability policy which protects them against unauthorized purchases or charges.”

All of this leaves us thinking that before anyone signs up for another free trial, they should sign up for a Mastercard.