What changed
GitHub announced three upcoming Copilot changes: credit-card enterprise signups and prepaid seats return from 1 September; no earlier than 28 September, web, mobile, and cloud-agent experiences share one default-enabled policy while chat is retained for the life of the account rather than 28 days; and code review's Default effort moves from Lite to Balanced. Existing card-funded enterprise customers move to upfront seat billing from 1 October.
Why it matters
One announcement changes data lifetime, default enablement, agent policy, review behavior, and cash timing. Organizations that treat Copilot settings or chat retention as stable can silently accept a broader agent surface and a much longer evidence and privacy horizon.
What to do
Before 28 September, export the current effective policy, decide whether the unified experience is allowed, document the account-lifetime retention impact, set an explicit code-review effort, and notify privacy, legal, finance, and repository owners. Reconcile assigned seats and usage before October billing.
Caveat
These are future rollout dates, not current production behavior, and GitHub says the unified launch will occur no earlier than 28 September. Prices are not changing, but account vetting, prorated allowances, rollout timing, policy labels, and billing implementation can still change; effective behavior must be rechecked after launch.