New York City became the first municipality in the country to adopt rules that require businesses to make cancelling a subscription as easy as signing up for one. Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced the “click-to-cancel” rule July 10, and it takes effect on October 1.
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The new rule promises hefty fines and aggressive enforcement for companies that violate them. Companies that do not provide a simple option to cancel subscriptions could pay $525 per user subscription. The rules will extend to all companies that run online subscriptions with customers in New York City including online tools, streaming services, and gym memberships.
The announcement builds on an executive order Mamdani signed four days into his term in January directing the city’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection to crack down on subscription traps and deceptive pricing citywide.
“If you can sign up with one click, you should be able to cancel with one click,” Mamdani told reporters at a press conference held in a gym in Lower Manhattan on July 10.
Lina Khan, former chair of the Federal Trade Commission, said the agency received tens of thousands of complaints each year from people who lost money to predatory subscription practices. “These are not just the tactics of fly-by-night scammers,” she said. “These are now part of the business model for some of the largest companies in our economy.” She pointed to an FTC investigation that found Amazon executives had run an internal initiative called Project Iliad specifically designed to make canceling a subscription harder.
Speaking about the new rules, Khan said they reflect the vision of municipal socialism Mamdani has pushed since taking office: “They represent an upwards transfer of wealth; often from people who are already living on the financial margins of this city, to people who are ultimately looking to buy a private jet or a second yacht.”
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The New York click-to-cancel rule follows a federal version brought forward by the FTC under Khan, who chaired the agency from 2021 to 2025. That proposal faced fierce pushback from the US Chamber of Commerce, the nation’s largest trade organization, which said the regulations amounted to micromanaging business practices. A federal judge later sided with the chamber’s legal challenges and stopped the rules from taking effect.
Sam Levine, now commissioner of New York City’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, led the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection alongside Khan. He said the new rules were written on similar lines to the federal rules and adapted to New York city law. “The court struck the FTC rules down saying the steps were not followed, and the current administration is really slow-walking it,” Levine explained. “So rather than waiting for the federal government, we are using our tools here to implement this protection.”
Levine said that any business that sells a subscription service to New Yorkers are going to be bound by the rules. He added that the city administration is also targeting “junk fees” that increase the final price of everything from apartments to sporting events, with a rule that requires sellers to “advertise the total price for any good or service, including all mandatory additional charges and fees, up front.”
This is the latest in a string of consumer and worker protection actions since Mamdani took office, which included a citywide ban on hidden hotel “junk fees” that took effect in February.
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