Shopify Subscription Disclosure Update: What Changed on Checkout

Four lines of checkout copy don't sound like something worth an article. But those four lines are the exact text a customer reads and agrees to before a recurring charge starts, and Shopify just replaced the default wording for every store that never customized it, which by Shopify's own account is most stores running subscriptions. If you sell a subscription or a paid membership on Shopify and haven't looked at Checkout settings since June 22, there's new language live on your store right now that you haven't read.

What actually changed on June 22

Shopify's June 17 changelog entry introduced four new translation keys for the subscription purchase disclosure, and the refreshed default text went live for any store that hadn't customized it, on June 22. The official changelog entry describes it as a routine refinement: "As checkout evolves over time, we refine defaults to keep your buyer experience clear and consistent." The four new keys are the agreement label, the consent text, the cancellation instructions, and the cancel text, the exact strings a customer sees confirming they understand they're starting a recurring charge.

This isn't a layout change and nothing in your theme broke. It's a wording default, and it only affects stores that left Shopify's built-in copy in place rather than writing their own. If your store already has custom disclosure text, that custom text stays exactly as it was.

What you can edit, and what you can't

On any plan other than Shopify Plus, most of the subscription disclosure text is fixed and can't be edited or removed, with one exception: the cancellation instructions sentence. Shopify's own documentation on subscription product considerations spells out exactly which strings are locked. The agreement label ("Your cart contains an automatically renewing subscription...") and the consent text (confirming the customer agrees to be automatically charged) are non-editable on non-Plus plans. The one line every merchant, regardless of plan, can edit is the cancellation instructions sentence, the part that tells the customer how to actually cancel (for example, "You may cancel anytime by going to your account or contacting the store").

That one editable sentence is also the one worth checking first. It's the line a customer reads to understand their actual cancellation path, and if it doesn't match how cancellation really works in your subscription or membership app, you've created exactly the kind of gap regulators care about: a checkout disclosure promising one thing while the real process does another.

Editable vs. non-editable, at a glance

Why Shopify tightened this now

Subscription disclosure wording sits at the center of a live regulatory fight in the US, and Shopify's update lands squarely inside it. The Restore Online Shoppers' Confidence Act (ROSCA) requires sellers running recurring-charge programs to clearly disclose material terms before billing information is collected, obtain informed consent, and offer a simple cancellation mechanism, and the FTC's Negative Option Rule page confirms the agency is actively revisiting how it enforces exactly this. A federal court vacated the FTC's broader "Click-to-Cancel" rule in 2025 on procedural grounds, but that vacatur didn't touch ROSCA itself, and the FTC has kept enforcing.

The enforcement record backs that up directly. Chegg paid $7.5 million in consumer redress after the FTC alleged its cancellation flow buried the option behind multiple screens and pause prompts, according to Goodwin's summary of recent FTC actions. Uber faces an amended complaint alleging its UberOne cancellation flow required up to 32 actions across 23 screens. LA Fitness is fighting a complaint over gym membership cancellation paths that required an in-person visit or certified mail. None of these are Shopify merchants, but every one of them turns on the same question a subscription disclosure answers: did the customer clearly understand what they agreed to, and can they actually get out the way the disclosure said they could.

Roughly 30 states have their own automatic-renewal laws on top of federal requirements, some stricter than what ROSCA requires. Violations of the FTC's existing Negative Option Rule can carry civil penalties up to $51,744 per violation, according to a 2026 subscription compliance guide from LegalForge, and that per-violation structure is exactly why disclosure and cancellation mismatches scale into real financial exposure fast for any subscription business, not just the household names in the enforcement actions above. A default disclosure update from Shopify doesn't make a merchant compliant with all of that on its own, but reading the new default and matching it to how cancellation actually works in your subscription or membership app is the cheapest possible check against exactly the kind of mismatch that's driving current enforcement.

What to check in your store this week

Open Settings, then Checkout, and find the subscription disclosure section in your theme content editor under Checkout & system. Read the current cancellation instructions sentence, the one line you can actually edit, and confirm it states your real cancellation path: does the customer cancel through their account, by contacting support, or some other specific mechanism, and is that accurate right now?

Check for doubled consent language between Shopify's default block and anything your subscription or membership app also displays at checkout. Two overlapping disclosures describing the same charge in slightly different terms is its own source of confusion, and confusion at the exact moment a customer agrees to a recurring charge is the specific failure pattern regulators have been pursuing.

If your subscription app renders through Shopify's native checkout rather than injecting its own custom checkout.liquid elements, this update simply applies to you the way it applies to every other store on the platform, nothing extra to reconcile. Apps that built custom checkout overlays outside Shopify's native flow are the ones with more to double-check, since their own disclosure language now sits alongside Shopify's updated default rather than replacing it.

FAQ

What changed in Shopify's subscription disclosure on June 22, 2026?

Shopify introduced four new translation keys (agreement label, consent text, cancellation instructions, and cancel text) for the default subscription checkout disclosure. Stores that hadn't customized this text got the refreshed default automatically on June 22. Stores that had already written custom disclosure copy kept their own text.

Do I need to do anything if I haven't customized my subscription disclosure?

Read the new default text in Checkout settings and confirm the cancellation instructions sentence, the one line editable by all merchants, accurately describes how a customer actually cancels in your store. Nothing technical breaks, but an inaccurate cancellation description is a real compliance and dispute risk regardless of whether Shopify or your own copy generated it.

Is this related to the FTC's Click-to-Cancel rule?

Not directly. Shopify's change is a platform-level wording default, not a response to a specific FTC rule, and the FTC's broader Click-to-Cancel rule remains vacated pending further rulemaking. But the same underlying legal requirement, ROSCA's clear-disclosure and simple-cancellation standard, still applies regardless of the vacated rule, and it's the standard both this Shopify update and current FTC enforcement actions are built around.

Can I edit all of the subscription disclosure text on Shopify?

Only the cancellation instructions sentence is editable on plans other than Shopify Plus. The agreement label, consent text, and cancel text are fixed. Shopify Plus merchants have broader checkout customization options through checkout extensibility.

Does this affect my membership app if it's separate from Shopify's native subscriptions?

If your membership or subscription app runs through Shopify's native checkout rather than a custom-built checkout page, this update applies the same way it does to every other store, since the disclosure lives in Shopify's checkout, not in the app itself. If your app injects its own separate disclosure language at checkout, check for overlap or conflict with Shopify's updated default.

Subscribfy's paid membership and subscription products run entirely through Shopify's native checkout, with no redirect and no custom checkout.liquid overlay, so platform-level updates like this one apply the same way they do to any other Shopify store rather than creating a separate disclosure to reconcile. If you want a second set of eyes on how your current subscription or membership setup handles this, book a call with the team.