Digital Services Fee: an extra 2-3% on your Amazon fees in France, Italy, Spain and the UK
If you also sell in France, Italy, Spain or the UK, your settlement has a small extra line next to every order item: the Digital Services Fee. It is a few cents per item, so it is easy to miss, but it is on every item.
We looked at the settlements of 12 sellers. On these four marketplaces, all 500 fee-bearing order items had this fee. In Germany, Ireland, Belgium and the US, none of them did (5,941 items). On all 500 items the fee could be calculated exactly: 2% or 3% of the Amazon fees on the item. In France, Italy and Spain it went up from 2% to 3% in April 2026.
The data
We used the order lines in the settlements between 27 December 2024 and 6 October 2026. One order item is one product in one order. An item is fee-bearing if it had a referral fee, an FBA fee or a shipping deduction.
| Marketplace | Fee-bearing items | With Digital Services Fee | Sellers |
|---|---|---|---|
| France | 336 | 336 | 2 |
| United Kingdom | 88 | 88 | 3 |
| Spain | 46 | 46 | 1 |
| Italy | 30 | 30 | 2 |
| Germany | 5,564 | 0 | 9 |
| United States | 354 | 0 | 2 |
| Ireland | 14 | 0 | 1 |
| Belgium | 9 | 0 | 2 |
The Digital Services Fee appeared at 5 sellers, EUR 96.04 and GBP 8.43 in total.
What it is calculated on
The base is not the selling price, but the sum of the fees Amazon deducts on the item:
- the referral fee,
- the FBA fee, if Amazon ships the item,
- the shipping deductions (the ShippingHB line for seller-fulfilled orders, and the chargeback of the shipping charged to the buyer for FBA).
The Digital Services Fee is 2% or 3% of this, rounded to the cent. On all 500 items this matched to within 1 cent.
A French example from the 3% period: the item's net price was EUR 68.16, the referral fee EUR 12.27, the shipping deduction EUR 1.49, together EUR 13.76. 3% of that is EUR 0.41, and that was the Digital Services Fee.
A UK example: the item was GBP 16.99, the referral fee GBP 2.55, the FBA fee GBP 2.76, the shipping chargeback GBP 4.16, together GBP 9.47. 2% of that is GBP 0.19.
From 2% to 3% in April
| Marketplace | At 2% | At 3% | Last 2% item | First 3% item |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| France | 181 | 155 | 7 April 2026 | 8 April 2026 |
| Italy | 7 | 23 | 26 March 2026 | 15 April 2026 |
| Spain | 27 | 19 | 2 April 2026 | 15 April 2026 |
| United Kingdom | 88 | 0 | 24 September 2026 | none |
In France the change is visible to the day. In Italy and Spain there were no items between the two dates, so all we know is that it happened between late March and mid-April. The UK stayed at 2% throughout. On 6 UK items the fee was so small that 2% and 3% rounded to the same cent. We counted these as 2%, because the other 82 UK items were clearly 2%.
How much it is compared to the selling price
| Marketplace | Rate | Digital Services Fee as % of selling price | Fee base (Amazon fees) as % of selling price |
|---|---|---|---|
| France | 2% | 0.37% | 18.25% |
| France | 3% | 0.58% | 19.20% |
| Italy | 2% | 0.37% | 18.30% |
| Italy | 3% | 0.59% | 19.73% |
| Spain | 2% | 0.38% | 18.99% |
| Spain | 3% | 0.60% | 19.85% |
| United Kingdom | 2% | 0.62% | 30.19% |
The selling price here is the items' net price (without the shipping charged to the buyer). The UK figure is higher because Amazon shipped most of those items (74 of 88), and the FBA fee is part of the base. In our sample, all French, Italian and Spanish items were seller-fulfilled.
Per item the fee is small: the median was EUR 0.17 on the French items and GBP 0.11 on the UK items. On EUR 17,020.77 of net sales across the 336 French items, it came to EUR 77.69.
You get it back on refunds
10 refunds returned Digital Services Fee. For 9 of them we also found the original sale: in 8 cases the seller got the full Digital Services Fee back, and in 1 partial refund half of it, in the same proportion as the referral fee. No separate Digital Services Fee was charged on the refund administration fee that Amazon keeps from the referral fee. We covered that fee in our article on the cost of a refund.
What to do
- Include it in your pricing. For sales in France, Italy and Spain, multiply your Amazon fees by 1.03; for the UK, by 1.02.
- If your calculation is older than April, update it. In France, Italy and Spain, 3% of your fees now goes to this, not 2%.
- Watch it more closely on cheap products. There, Amazon fees take a bigger share of the price, and so does this fee. We covered fees on cheap products in this article.
- Check your settlement. In Seller Central under Reports, Payments, look among the fees on the order items; in our data it comes as DigitalServicesFee. If a French, Italian, Spanish or UK item has a referral fee but no such fee, that differs from what we saw.
Why the numbers are not exact
- Only 5 sellers had a Digital Services Fee. Almost all French items (332 of 336) come from one seller, and we saw the change from 2% to 3% at only 2 sellers.
- All French, Italian and Spanish items were seller-fulfilled. We did not measure how the fee works on these marketplaces for FBA orders fulfilled from Germany (for example under Pan-European FBA).
- We dated the change by the posting date in the settlement, not by the order date.
- For most sellers the data is complete until 21-23 August 2026, so the weeks after that contain fewer items.
On the four marketplaces, 500 of 500 fee-bearing items had a Digital Services Fee; on the other marketplaces, none of 5,941. The fee was 2% of the Amazon fees on the item, and since April 2026 it has been 3% in France, Italy and Spain.