Amazon Prime users who unknowingly signed up for the monthly service may be eligible fora payment as part of a $2.5 billion settlement. The online shopping giant and the Federal Trade Commission agreed to a settlement stemming from claims that Amazon violated FTC rules by “knowingly misleading millions of consumers into enrolling in Prime.”

Here’s what you should know about the settlement:

Why was the lawsuit filed?

The FTC accused Amazon of enrolling customers in Prime subscriptions without their consent. The shopping giant was also accused of making it unnecessarily difficult to cancel a subscription.

Although it agreed to the settlement, Amazon did not admit any guilt in the matter.

How is the money being dispersed?

As part of the settlement, $1.5 billion will be set aside for payments for the estimated 35 million consumers affected by the issue. The other $1 billion is a civil penalty that the FTC says is the largest ever in a case involving an FTC rule violation.

Who qualifies for a payment?

The payments are available to Prime users who signed up for an account between June 23, 2019 and June 23, 2025. There are two groupings of those users who are eligible for payments.

The first group will automatically receive their payments if they signed up for Prime through a “challenged enrollment flow” and haven’t used more than three Prime benefits.

Court documents say the “challenged enrollment flow” is defined as “any version of the Universal Prime Decision Page, the Shipping Option Select Page, Prime Video enrollment flow or the Single Page Checkout.”

Amazon will automatically issue payments of up to $51 to those users. Amazon will automatically issue those payments by Dec. 25, 2025.

The second group will have to file a claim showing that they signed up through the same methods, or experienced difficulty in trying to cancel their membership. To qualify for payments, these users must not have used more than 10 Prime benefits during any 12-month period of enrollment.

Qualified users in the second group will be notified by Amazon when they can file a claim, with the notification coming after the first group’s automatic payments have been sent. Users will then have 180 days to file a claim.

Those claims will be processed in 2026 by Amazon.

What happens next?

The settlement is subject to court approval, but when that will happen is unclear.

Amazon has also agreed to enhance or introduce practices to protect customers. Amazon must ensure customers are aware of what they are signing up for and how often they will be charged for the service. That includes adding “a clear and conspicuous button for customers to decline Prime. Amazon can no longer have a button that says, ‘No, I don’t want Free Shipping,’” the FTC said.

The company is also required to create “an easy way for consumers to cancel Prime, using the same method that consumers used to sign up.”