Skype users can no longer purchase individual credit for international phone calls. Microsoft asks you to take out a SaaS subscription for this.

Microsoft has quietly discontinued the ability to purchase individual credits for Skype. There was no communication from the company: users had to discover that they could no longer add credit to their account. Microsoft confirms to TechCrunch that this measure is final.

Mandatory subscription

Skype allowed you to purchase a local phone number through the app. This meant that you could call abroad relatively cheaply via Skype. This is now only possible if you take out a monthly subscription. Skype must therefore follow the broader strategy of parent company Microsoft, which is trying to attract as many users as possible to cloud subscriptions.

For example, for Belgian phone numbers, such a subscription costs 3.63 euros or 7.87 euros. If you want to make calls anywhere in the world, you pay 15.73 euros per month. A subscription is only required when calling mobile or landline numbers using Skype. Calls between Skype accounts remain free.

Give and take

Skype is one of the pioneers of Internet telephony. The app has been around since 2003 and has been owned by Microsoft since 2011. Today, Skype has lost much of its relevance. It has lost competition to WhatsApp, Zoom and other popular video calling applications. The fact that Microsoft launched Teams in 2016, five years after acquiring Skype, didn’t help the platform.

Microsoft makes no secret of how many people still use Skype today. According to the latest known figures, it would still be 36 million. Every now and then Microsoft reminds us that Skype still exists. Recently, Microsoft users received an unexpected gift: ads were replaced with AI functions. In return, Microsoft wants to get them to sign up for a SaaS subscription.