A Tale of PayPal's "Automatic Payments"

I received a reminder that an annual subscription was due, with some vague wording suggesting that it was an automatic payment.  I did not recall setting up a pre-authorised payment and could not log into the eCommerce site due to a company change.  I found that that I had last paid via PayPal, and via PayPal's Help, end up at the Settings (the gear icon) / Payments / Automatic Payments page.

The list contained a quarterly pre-authorised payment that I recognised, an entry for the eCommerce site above, but also numerous entries for one-time purchases.   Two levels of PayPal Customer Support were unable to provide clear answers on how to distinguish the two.  A supervisor implied that recurring payments showed a payment interval, which meant I had to manually initiate the eCommerce site payment.

I managed to gain access to the eCommerce site and found that the annual subscription was an automatic payment.  Further research led to https://www.paypal-community.com/t5/Security-and-Fraud-Archives/Automatic-Payments/m-p/2927778 which states: 

A merchant will not have the option to create an automatic payment/billing agreement for you without your permission. Someone will have to authorize it by logging into your PayPal account and initiating a purchase through that vendor. A billing agreement is a preauthorization for future purchases. Merchants typically use them to create a faster checkout experience or a recurring subscription.

In short, the Automatic Payments list includes one-time purchases where the merchant has asked PayPal to set up a billing agreement such that the next time I select 'PayPal' when buying from that merchant, I do not need to login to PayPal to authorise the payment.  This process is supposedly mentioned on the merchant checkout page, but I have yet to see one (it might be in very small print).  

The list also includes billing agreements for recurring subscriptions.  PayPal only knows if the billing agreement is recurring when PayPal is involved on both sides of the transaction (the quarterly recurring payment that I recognised).  You can ask your bank to reject a recurring payment (and possibly charge a fee) but your bank does not keep track of the merchants where you have set up recurring payment agreements.  It seems that PayPal provides additional security by making these billing agreements visible.

I am setting up a list of all recurring payments (generally useful when credit card number change) and will periodically clean up 'one-time' billing agreements - I am willing to take the extra step to authorise the PayPal payment.  I am also going to be more careful not to allow merchants to save my credit card information because "it makes checkout more convenient".