But what happens when your credit cards are cancelled after you die? That's a Catch-22 right there.

Alternative monetization strategy right there: keep paying us or we'll send all your secret documents to your loved ones / enemies :-)

It would be a shame if somehow, you know, being able to delete data became an uber-premium feature :D

I've thought about this. Not a final decision per se (and I haven't coded anything for the scenario) but I imagine I'd maybe have the third party accessing the data pay (up to a cap) to reconcile the account to make it "current" before giving them access - something like that.

It avoids folks signing up, canceling the card and then riding for free.

My 2cents, ditch the monthly plan, price it yearly instead. Monthly plans are for things you will actually use day to day like netflix, yearly are more like "insurance" products which is what this is, I think displaying the yearly option will be a better value proposition for people looking at it.

Second, I don't know what payment you're using, but seriously consider paypal if you're not already, because I'm pretty sure you can setup yearly recurring "subscriptions" on paypal and people are much more likely to keep their paypal funding sources up to date. So you're not going to have to nag them to update credit card info every couple years and they're less likely to have occasion to think "do I really want to pay for this", it'll just be pay automatically.

This also moves the point of cancellation to once a year and not monthly, or one month after.

I appreciate this. Thanks!

I'm using Stripe at the moment.

I would assume they pass your data to your chosen person then close your account so I don't see the problem?

That's an idea for sure. What could be interesting is cases of some credentials/data/whatever being shared among multiple folks. So do you wait until each person has viewed/downloaded then close? Do I (Passbox) notify everyone else if one person gets access then allow them all access? To be continued...