“Subscriptions clearly offer a lot of convenience but as we’ve seen that convenience comes at a cost and we no longer think this is an acceptable trade-off.”
A recurring payment forces Mullvad to keep the link between your account and your card for as long as the subscription runs. A one-time payment lets it scrub that link after a few weeks. So Mullvad killed new subscriptions and gave up the stickiest revenue in software. That is what a privacy claim looks like when it costs the company something.