A new 5% charge from 1 October: monthly billing on CSP software costs extra

From 1 October 2026 Microsoft introduces a 5% charge on software subscriptions bought through CSP (Cloud Solution Provider, the partner model most Danish businesses buy Microsoft licenses through). Microsoft calls it a cost of capital charge, that is, a price for tying up capital.

The charge hits one specific combination: subscriptions with an annual term that you choose to pay monthly. Microsoft's logic is that when you commit for a year but pay a little at a time, they are effectively lending you the money across the year, and they now charge for that.

It is the second price rise in 2026. First came the July increases on the list prices themselves, and now comes a charge on the payment method. The two are independent and can hit you at the same time.

It is just as important to know what escapes, because that is where your options are:

• •If you pay the whole annual commitment at once (annual billing), there is no charge. You get the full annual price without the 5%.
• •If you run month-to-month without an annual term, there is no charge. But month-to-month is typically more expensive at the base price (often around 20% more than an annual term), so it is rarely the cheap route.
• •Online services like Microsoft 365 and Office 365 are not the focus of this particular charge. It is about software subscriptions, the category that covers on-prem products.

In other words: the charge is a price on the flexibility of committing for a year but spreading the payment out. To avoid it, you either pay annually or accept the higher month-to-month base price.

The category in question is called software subscriptions in CSP. These are the products you typically run on your own servers and buy as a subscription rather than as a one-time license. In practice it is businesses with on-prem infrastructure: a physical or virtual server estate, a local data center or hybrid setups.

Most Danish SMBs with that kind of thing have chosen monthly billing. The reason is usually cash flow: a fixed monthly cost is easier than one large annual bill. That exact decision now costs 5% extra from 1 October.

If you have moved everything to the cloud and only run Microsoft 365, Exchange Online and similar online services, you are probably not in the target group for this particular charge.

The numbers here are illustrative; your actual prices depend on your agreement and SKUs. The point is to show the mechanics.

Say you have software subscriptions worth DKK 100,000 a year, with an annual term, paid monthly. Today you split it into twelve installments of roughly DKK 8,333.

From 1 October 2026 a 5% charge is added when the agreement renews. The DKK 100,000 becomes DKK 105,000. That is DKK 5,000 extra a year, purely because you pay monthly rather than annually.

Had you paid it all annually, the DKK 5,000 is saved. For a business with larger on-prem environments, where subscriptions run into several hundred thousand kroner, the difference becomes noticeable.

The trade-off is real: monthly billing gives better cash flow but now costs 5%. Annual billing ties up the money earlier but is cheaper. That is the decision to make deliberately, rather than letting it run on autopilot at renewal.

The charge is manageable if you act before renewal:

Sources: Directions on Microsoft: new 5% monthly billing premium, q-advise: Microsoft's 5% CSP software uplift October 2026, CDW: price increase on CSP NCE annual subscriptions billed monthly.