Short Answer: No.

Long Answer:

Great question. I’m assuming you’re referring to the entire process of buying subscriptions of different OTTs, not just paying for them.

Different Internet TV channels and streaming video services (collectively “OTTs”) have different websites with different UIs and differing UX for purchase and payment.

Some of them are relatively frictionless whereas others can be extremely painful.

I described an example of the latter nature in my blog post entitled Five Best Practices To Convert Freemium To Premium – Part 2. Let me copy-paste the relevant section from there:

I recently wanted to watch the Portugal v. Spain football match at the ongoing World Cup. Because the only TV in my house was not available at the time, I headed over to SonyLIV, the licensed provider of live streams for FIFA World Cup 2018. The website offered a five-minute delayed stream for free (“freemium”) and the live stream for a fee (“premium”). I first checked out the freemium version. After watching it for a few minutes, I was reasonably happy with the streaming quality. I then decided to upgrade to the premium version.

What followed was a very painful experience.

The site didn’t allow purchase in guest mode. The registration form asked for too much information like gender, date of birth, zip code, etc. On top of that, it had a reCAPTCHA that was terribly hard to decipher.

Somehow, I managed to crack it and clicked the DONE button at the end of the page. Nothing happened. I tried a few more times. Then I got an error message saying the reCAPTCHA had expired. I was told to crack another reCAPTCHA.

Normally, I’d have bailed out of the website at this stage. On this instance, I went ahead only because of my love of soccer.

After cracking the second reCAPTCHA, I reached the checkout page. The price was garbled. I saw multiple payment options. I selected PayZapp and clicked the PROCEED TO PAY button. On the next screen, I was expecting to enter my PayZapp PIN number. Instead, I saw a repeat of all modes of payment – except PayZapp.

Duh?

Once again, driven by my passion for the game, I went ahead.

I selected credit card and hit the PAY button. Nothing happened.

Friction finally overcame passion and I abandoned my attempt to upgrade to SonyLIV’s premium version.

While Sony’s is the most egregious example of a company that makes it difficult to upgrade to its premium version, it’s by no means the only one. When I point out the friction in their purchase journey, many companies uniformly say “security”. While it’s not to be taken lightly, roughly half of these guys have a wrong notion of security and the other half needs to realize that security doesn’t pay their bills. Besides, when was the last time you had to enter your DOB or crack a reCAPTCHA while buying something from the Amazons and the Cleartrips and the Ubers of the world?

And this is for buying and paying for a subscription.

When it comes to canceling a subscription, the level of pain can reach new heights. Some OTTs place the CANCEL link right upfront, daring you to cancel anytime, whereas others hide it three levels below and, in the most egregious of cases, some of them don’t even allow you to cancel a subscription on the website, instead telling you to call a Hong Kong number for all cancelations.


Yes, going by the aforementioned disparate and often painful experience with purchase, payment and cancelation of different streaming video services, I do wish there was a single website where I could do all of this at a single place.

Some people have been suggesting that banks should offer such a subscription management service. See Finextra article entitled People want Subscription Management from their Bank.

But, as I wrote in my comment to that article, I’m not so sure if that aligns with their business model.

With #RoachMotel and other dark patterns used by service providers snaring consumers into #SubscriptionTrap, there’s no argument that there’s a compelling need for Subscription Management. But I’m not sure if banks have a play here or even want to have a play here.

Banks make money only when the subscription continues to run. Ergo they have a vested interest in NOT letting the consumer cancel the subscription or in getting into subscription management in any other manner that would benefit Consumers. Of course, this does not apply to banks, if any, that value CX over Revenue and banks who have delusionary thoughts of being able to charge fees for providing Subscription Management.

Coming back to the question, sadly, I don’t know of any way to buy, pay and cancel subscriptions for different OTTs in a single place and with a single payment.

Please let me know if you find one.

Startup idea?

UPDATE-1: Yidio

This update does not change my original answer but I thought of making it since it’s in a related area.

When he saw Quora’s tweet of my answer, a Tweeple recommended yidio.com. This startup allows you to consume content from various OTTs via a single unified UI but it does not let you buy, pay, cancel or otherwise manage your subscriptions to multiple OTTs.

ByTW, since OTTs themselves aggregate content from multiple studios, any company that lets you manage subscriptions and / or consume content from across multiple OTTs will become an Aggregator of Aggregator, or what I call Uber Aggregator.

UPDATE-2: Uber Aggregator

I define Uber Aggregator as a company that lets you Purchase + Pay and / or Consume services from multiple providers in a single app / website.

As we saw in the above update, Yidio is a Uber Aggregator for OTTs, again only for Consume, not Purchase + Pay.

I have come across one Uber Aggregator in the rideshare space – ixigo Cabs. It displays cab options from Uber, Ola, MERU, and other rideshare companies, along with ETA and Fares. But, once you selected an option, the app would divert you to the respective app and the downstream steps happened within the respective rideshare app. Which meant that you had to install each rideshare app on your smartphone.

There are a couple of Uber Aggregators in the media / news space – Pulse (now part of LinkedIn), Flipboard, et al. They also only handle the Consume part of aggregation. They’re reasonably successful but none of them has achieved anywhere near the ubiquity I expected of them when I came across them.

All Uber Aggregators I’ve encountered so far only play in the Consume part of aggregation. I don’t know a single Uber Aggregator in Purchase + Pay space.

Somehow Uber Aggregators haven’t become too big. Maybe because the companies they’re trying to aggregate are powerful giants like Netflix (OTT), Uber (Rideshare) or New York Times (Media).

UPDATE-3: Metasearch Engine in OTA

“Trivago is a Metasearch Engine that searches multiple OTA sites (including Expedia) for rates. TripAdvisor aggregates reviews, and lets users book hotes, again through multiple sites.”

Purchase, Pay and Consume all three actions happen on respective OTAs, therefore Trivago and TripAdvisor don’t quality as Uber Aggregators.