Your Subscription Checkout Went Back to Shopify's Default Wording in June

The disclosure your customers read is probably not the one you wrote.

If your store sells a subscription, there is a paragraph next to the pay button that a customer reads before they agree to a recurring charge. In June 2026 Shopify changed how that paragraph is built. It is now assembled from six separate settings, four of them new, and wording you had customized in the label that used to supply it does not carry over.

Nothing broke when that happened. No order failed, no subscription stopped billing, nothing in the admin turned red. The only way to find out whether your checkout still says what you wrote is to put a subscription product in a cart and read it.

What did Shopify actually change?

Shopify posted the change on June 17, 2026, under the heading "Updated disclosure for subscription purchases on Checkout". The entry names four new translation keys:

• Purchase options subscription agreement label
• Purchase options subscription consent text
• Purchase options subscription cancellation instructions
• Purchase options subscription cancel text

Then one sentence on timing: "On June 22, the default disclosure will be shown if no customizations have been made."

Read on its own, that sentence sounds like it leaves a customized store alone. The help documentation says something different. Subscription checkouts now use the four new labels, and "text that you customized in Purchase options agreement label doesn't carry over to them". The old agreement label is exactly where that wording used to live.

Shopify's own troubleshooting section is blunter about the symptom. Under the causes of checkout showing default wording instead of yours, the first one listed is that your wording "is still in Purchase options agreement label, which no longer supplies the subscription disclosure".

What is the disclosure made of now?

Shopify's default disclosure reads, in full:

Your cart contains an automatically renewing subscription. By clicking "Pay now," you expressly and affirmatively agree that you will be automatically charged the recurring amount(s) shown in your cart (plus shipping and taxes) until the subscription(s) ends or you cancel. You may cancel anytime by going to your account or contacting the store. Please see the cancellation policy.

In Shopify's words, "the disclosure is assembled from 6 parts", each one a different setting:

1. The agreement label. The opening clause, through "By clicking". It carries no wording of its own beyond that: it holds the variables that pull in the other parts. Theme content editor, under Checkout and system, then Checkout payment. Shopify Plus only.
2. The button text. The "Pay now" in the middle of the sentence is your own checkout button text, arriving through {{ button_label }}. Any plan.
3. The consent text. The "you expressly and affirmatively agree that you will be automatically charged the recurring amount(s)" sentence, through {{ consent_text }}. Shopify Plus only.
4. The cancel text. "You may cancel anytime by going to your account or contacting the store", through {{ cancel_text }}. Any plan.
5. The cancellation instructions. "Please see the", through {{ cancellation_instructions }}. Any plan.
6. The cancellation policy label. The words the policy link is made of, through {{ cancellation_policy_label }}. Set under Settings and then Policies, not in the theme editor. Any plan.

Two of those are frames rather than sentences. The agreement label carries the consent text and cancellation instructions variables. The cancellation instructions label carries the cancel text and cancellation policy label variables. That nesting is why deleting one pair of braces has an effect nobody predicts.

Which parts can you edit on your plan?

Two of the six need Shopify Plus, and the split falls in the opposite place from where most operators assume a platform limit sits.

• The consent sentence is not yours below Plus. The sentence stating that the customer agrees to be charged again on a schedule is part 3, and on any plan other than Plus it keeps Shopify's wording.
• The cancellation wording is yours on any plan. All three cancellation fragments, parts 4, 5 and 6, are marked any plan.

If you are moving wording out of the old label and you are not on Plus, Shopify is explicit about the ceiling: "you can migrate only the wording that belongs to the cancel text and cancellation instructions labels. Parts 1 and 3 keep the default Shopify wording."

Why does the default wording keep coming back?

Shopify names two causes. The first is the migration above, where the wording is still sitting in the old label. The second catches the careful editor rather than the careless one.

Every label holds its variables in double braces, and removing one while rewriting the sentence around it is easy to do. Shopify lists that as the second cause and says a missing variable is what to check: "If the checkout displays the default Shopify wording instead of your custom wording, then a variable might be missing from the label that holds it." Its instruction on both editing paths is the same, which is to keep every variable in place, including the double braces around it.

So if you rewrote the cancel text and watched it revert, look for a missing {{ cancel_text }} or {{ cancellation_policy_label }} before you look anywhere else.

Why is the disclosure showing twice?

Also two causes, both named in the documentation.

• A custom checkout block carrying its own disclosure. If subscription terms were added as a checkout block at some point, that text now sits beside a disclosure checkout assembles on its own. The fix is to remove the duplicate from the block and customize the one checkout builds, which is what Shopify's guidance says to do.
• The full old sentence pasted into the new agreement label. That label already pulls the consent and cancellation wording in through its variables, so pasting the whole sentence in states the same thing twice. Shopify says it plainly: adding the full sentence "can repeat the same information to customers".

Which label should you leave alone?

Do not empty the old Purchase options agreement label on the way out. It no longer supplies the subscription disclosure, but Shopify states it is still in use for other purchase options, including pre-orders, try before you buy and deferred payment plans. Clear it and you have quietly rewritten the terms on those flows instead. Shopify's migration steps say to leave it as it is.

Read it before you decide you have nothing to migrate, though. The wording your customers used to see came out of that label, so whatever sentence somebody wrote carefully for it is still sitting in there.

One detail that trips up the migration on a standard plan. The old agreement label also appears in Shopify's table of other checkout wording, and every label in that table "requires the Shopify Plus plan" to edit. That is not a blocker, because the job is not to rewrite the old label. Shopify's migration steps have you search it, copy the wording you customized, and paste each piece into the subscription label it belongs to, which below Plus means the cancel text and the cancellation instructions.

What if your store is translated?

If the store is translated, editing the labels is half the job. Shopify: "Your changes apply to your checkout's default language, so if your store is translated into multiple languages, then update your translations after you edit the disclosure."

A store selling in two languages with a custom disclosure in one of them is showing two different agreements at the same checkout.

Does this change what the law asks of you?

Last week we published what a subscription flow still owes after click-to-cancel was vacated. That post says the disclosure, the consent record and the cancel copy are the merchant's to build rather than the platform's. The six part split cuts both ways against it.

The cancellation wording is yours on every plan, and that is the half that matters most, because state automatic renewal laws are specific about how a customer gets out. The consent sentence above it is not yours below Plus, which the earlier post did not say. If a legal review produced specific consent language you intend to use, your plan decides whether checkout can carry it.

Shopify's own instruction before touching any of this is to review custom wording with your legal team, and that is the right order of operations. The platform decides which strings you are allowed to edit. It does not decide whether the result discloses what it has to.

Fifteen minutes on your own checkout

1. Put a subscription product in a cart and go to checkout. Read the disclosure the way a customer would, start to finish.
2. Compare it against Shopify's default above. If it matches word for word and you were expecting custom wording, you have your answer.
3. In the theme content editor, search Purchase options subscription and read all four labels.
4. Search Purchase options agreement label and read what is in it. That is the old wording, and it is still governing pre-orders and deferred payments.
5. Check each label for its variables, double braces included.
6. Under Settings and then Policies, check the purchase options cancellation policy, and confirm the link lands somewhere that answers the question it raises.
7. If the store is translated, do all of it again in each language.

What should you fix once you have looked?

The repair itself is small. Finding out you needed it is the hard part, and it belongs in the same pass as the tracking check and the notice schedule, because all three fail the same quiet way. That pass is the work in CPG and ecommerce website development, and in Shopify and WordPress development when the platform itself is the open question. The shorter version of what a healthcare or supplement storefront owes at checkout sits in our 75 healthcare commerce questions.

This is operational guidance, not legal advice. Automatic renewal requirements vary by state and keep moving, and Shopify's own instruction is to have custom disclosure wording reviewed before you publish it. Have qualified counsel look at your specific offer, your disclosure and your cancellation flow.

Common questions

Sources

• Shopify Help Center, Considerations and payment gateways for subscription products checked 2026-10-05
• Shopify Changelog, Updated disclosure for subscription purchases on Checkout, June 17, 2026 checked 2026-10-05

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