The federal click-to-cancel rule is gone for now. The obligations it described mostly aren’t, because older federal law, the states, the card networks, the UK and the EU cover the same ground.
An operator’s summary of the rules on defaults, consent and urgency, as of September 2026. Not legal advice: the rules change often, and what applies depends on where your customers live. Have counsel review your flows.
Click-to-cancel. The FTC finalized its revised Negative Option Rule, known as click-to-cancel, in October 2024. On July 8, 2025, six days before most of it was due to take effect, the Eighth Circuit vacated it in Custom Communications v. FTC, because the agency hadn’t done a required preliminary regulatory analysis Filed. The ruling was about procedure, not easy cancellation. The FTC restarted with an advance notice of proposed rulemaking in March 2026; as of September 2026 its rule page shows no new proposed rule Published. No federal click-to-cancel rule is in force.
ROSCA still applies. The 2010 Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act covers anything sold online with a negative option. It requires clear disclosure of all material terms before taking billing information, express informed consent before charging, and “simple mechanisms” to stop recurring charges Published. The Amazon settlement’s terms, a clear decline button and cancellation by the same method as signup, show how the FTC reads “simple.”
Section 5 and the pricing guides. The FTC Act’s ban on deception covers fake urgency. The Guides Against Deceptive Pricing require a “was” price to have been “openly and actively offered” for “a reasonably substantial period” Published. The 2024 reviews rule bars incentives conditioned on sentiment Published.
Text messages. Marketing texts sent with automated systems need prior express written consent, which can’t be a condition of purchase (chapter 7).
The practical standard is the strictest state you sell into, and for most national brands that’s California.
Visa and Mastercard act like regulators on disputes. Visa’s monitoring flags a merchant whose disputes and fraud reports reach 0.5% of transactions, with fees above 1.5% in the US. Mastercard’s program starts at 100 chargebacks and 1.5% in a month. Refunds after a dispute don’t remove it from the count Reported. Surprise charges are a fast way toward those lines.
The federal rule fell. The duty it described didn’t: disclose, get consent, and let people leave the way they came in.
This is one chapter of The Free Choice, which is free and readable in full on a single page with no form in front of it.