Making it hard to cancel is now illegal. Your website has until July 2027 to catch up

Early this month, Parliament passed the Competition and Consumer Amendment (Unfair Trading Practices) Bill 2026, which the government calls the most significant update to Australian Consumer Law since it began. As SmartCompany reports, from 1 July 2027 it will be illegal to make a subscription hard to cancel, to hide fees until the final step of checkout, or to use manipulative website design that nudges people into choices they would not otherwise make. The penalties reach $100 million, and the ACCC and state regulators will be enforcing them.

Assistant Minister Andrew Leigh, announcing the change, put it plainly: people should not be “nudged and steered by online design features into decisions they wouldn’t otherwise make”.

It reads like a compliance headline. It is really a website brief. Almost every part of this law is about what your site actually does: how someone signs up, what price they see, and how they get out. And you have twelve months.

What is actually banned, in plain website terms

Three things, translated from legal language into what sits on your pages.

1. Hard-to-cancel subscriptions. If customers can sign up online, they must be able to cancel online too, including the ones who first joined by phone or in person. Cancelling can only ask for the steps that are genuinely necessary, so no phone-only cancellation, no five-screen “are you sure” maze, no burying the button. You will also need to show the key terms (price, contract length, renewal, how to cancel) before someone commits, and send reminders before a renewal or the end of an introductory price.

2. Drip pricing. The price someone sees at the start has to be the price they pay. Every compulsory fee has to sit next to the base price, not appear one screen before payment. If a booking fee, a card surcharge or a “service fee” only turns up at the end, that has to change.

3. Manipulative design. The catch-all is a ban on design that manipulates or “unreasonably distorts” how people decide. In practice that means the tricks: fake countdown timers, pre-ticked add-ons, a bright “yes” button beside a greyed-out “no thanks”, deliberately confusing opt-outs. If a pattern exists to trip people up rather than help them, assume it is on the way out.

This is a gift dressed up as a rule

An easy cancel button sounds like an invitation to lose customers. In practice it is the opposite. The businesses that already make signing up and leaving simple are the ones people trust enough to sign up with in the first place. Honest pricing and a clear exit are not a tax on your conversion rate, they are part of what earns it. This is one of those rare cases where the compliant thing and the thing that actually sells are the same thing, which is the whole point of a website built to convert rather than to trick.

Who needs to care most

If your website takes a recurring payment or adds a fee at checkout, this is you. Gyms and studios, clinics and memberships, subscription boxes and software tools, and any online store that adds shipping or booking fees late in the process. If you are not certain whether your signup or checkout crosses the line, that uncertainty is exactly the thing to resolve now, while there is time to fix it calmly rather than in a panic.

Your twelve-month to-do list

None of this is urgent in the alarm-bell sense, and all of it is build work, which is precisely why you should not leave it to June 2027. A year goes quickly when the job involves changing how your site takes money.

1. Audit your signup. Before anyone commits, are the price, the contract length, the renewal terms and the way to cancel all clearly shown?
2. Build a real online cancel path. A few clear steps, available to every customer, not just the ones who joined online.
3. Move every compulsory fee up. Put it next to the headline price, not on the last screen.
4. Strip the tricks. Pre-ticked boxes, fake urgency, confusing opt-outs, all out.
5. Set your reminders. Automated notices before a renewal and before an introductory price ends.

The func.digital take

A law like this tends to split a market in two. Some businesses will scramble at the deadline. Others will quietly get ahead and start using “no lock-in, cancel anytime, honest pricing” as a genuine selling point long before they are required to. The work is the same either way. The only difference is whether you do it on your own terms over the next few months, or under pressure next winter.

If you would like to know whether your signup, pricing and cancellation flows are on the right side of the new law, and to get a clear list of what to change, that is exactly what a free digital systems audit is for. We will walk through your site, flag anything that could count as a subscription trap, drip pricing or a manipulative pattern, and show you the shortest path to sorted. Get in touch while a year still feels like plenty of time.