Amazon’s Rumored ‘Project Meridian’ Fee Restructure Has FBA Sellers on Edge

Something is brewing inside Amazon’s Seattle and Arlington offices, and it’s making some of the platform’s most profitable third-party sellers very nervous. Multiple sources close to the matter — including two senior account managers at Amazon who spoke on condition of anonymity and a prominent agency leader who works with over 40 FBA brands — say Amazon has been quietly stress-testing a new fee architecture that would significantly alter the unit economics of selling through Fulfillment by Amazon. Internally, the initiative is reportedly being referred to as Project Meridian.

The unconfirmed restructure is said to target three pressure points: long-term storage fees for ASIN-level inventory older than 180 days, referral fee percentages in high-velocity categories including Home & Kitchen and Sports & Outdoors, and a new “fulfillment complexity surcharge” tied to non-standard packaging dimensions. If even two of these changes roll out before October 15 — the unofficial start of Q4 inventory prep season — sellers with deep ASIN catalogs could be staring down margin compression they have little time to model for.

What Is Project Meridian and Why Is Amazon Allegedly Pursuing It Now?

The timing is not accidental, sources say. Amazon’s North American Stores business has faced mounting pressure from Walmart Marketplace’s accelerating GMV growth — Walmart’s third-party seller count reportedly crossed 180,000 active merchants in Q1 2026 — and internally, Amazon executives are allegedly debating whether the current fee table is leaving margin on the table or actively suppressing seller growth in categories where Walmart has been gaining ground.

“What we’re hearing is that Meridian is less about squeezing sellers and more about rebalancing the fee structure to favor faster-turning, lighter SKUs. But for anyone running a large catalog with seasonal depth, this is a gut punch,” said Chad Rubin, co-founder of Skubana and a longtime Amazon ecosystem commentator, who says he has been briefed by two separate consulting contacts with Amazon seller advisory relationships.

Amazon declined to comment on the record. A spokesperson issued a boilerplate statement saying the company “regularly evaluates its fee structures to ensure they reflect the cost of services provided and remain competitive for selling partners.” That language, sources note, is nearly identical to the pre-announcement language used ahead of the January 2024 FBA inbound placement fee rollout — which itself caught thousands of sellers off guard.

Which Seller Categories Are Allegedly Most Exposed?

According to unconfirmed details shared by one source who claims to have seen an internal Amazon Seller Central communication draft, the categories reportedly most affected under Project Meridian would include:

• Home & Kitchen: Referral fees allegedly moving from 15% to 17% on ASINs priced between $15 and $50 — a sweet spot for private label brands.
• Sports & Outdoors: Rumored introduction of a seasonal storage multiplier between August 1 and October 31, effectively penalizing sellers who stage Q4 inventory early.
• Grocery & Gourmet: Alleged new expiration-date proximity fee for items within 90 days of best-by date at time of inbound receipt.
• Tools & Home Improvement: The unconfirmed “fulfillment complexity surcharge” — reportedly $0.35 to $0.75 per unit — tied to items requiring additional prep or bagging at fulfillment centers.

These details are unverified and may reflect early internal modeling that never reaches final policy. But the specificity of what sources are describing has rattled agency leaders who advise large FBA accounts.

“I’ve been in this space since 2013 and I’ve never seen this level of chatter from multiple independent sources pointing to the same internal project name. Whether Meridian is what ships or something gets renamed and watered down, sellers need to be running margin sensitivity models right now, not in September,” said Liran Hirschkorn, founder of Incrementum Digital, in a LinkedIn post that has been circulating heavily in seller communities this week.

How Are Large FBA Operators Reportedly Responding?

The FBA aggregator sector — which spent most of 2024 and 2025 in restructuring mode following the post-pandemic valuation collapse — is allegedly treating Project Meridian rumors with particular alarm. Sources close to Thrasio‘s current operating team say the company has convened an internal fee-impact working group and is reportedly modeling a scenario where blended margin across its catalog drops 2.1 to 3.4 percentage points if the referral fee and storage changes both land as rumored.

Thrasio did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.

Perch, the Boston-based aggregator that has been executing a quieter but reportedly profitable catalog rationalization since early 2025, is said by one source to be accelerating SKU sunset decisions specifically in anticipation of storage fee escalation. “They’re pulling the plug on anything under a 4x annual sell-through rate before the rumored change window,” the source said.

Independent sellers in communities including the Amazon Seller Central official forum and private Facebook groups like “Amazon FBA Sharks” have been sharing screenshots of what they claim are internal Amazon vendor manager conversations referencing “upcoming fee table changes for H2 2026.” The authenticity of these screenshots cannot be independently confirmed, and Amazon has not validated any such communications.

Is Amazon’s Timing Deliberately Designed to Limit Seller Response?

The most pointed allegation circulating among sellers and agency operators isn’t about the fee changes themselves — it’s about the alleged timing strategy. Several sources claim that Amazon has historically structured major fee announcements to arrive with 30-to-45 day implementation windows, giving large sellers insufficient runway to renegotiate supplier costs, adjust listing prices, or redirect inventory to FBM before the changes take effect.

“If this drops in August with a September 15 effective date, you’ve got sellers who’ve already sent their Q4 inbound shipments sitting on inventory they can’t pull back. That’s not a coincidence. That’s a leverage moment,” said one agency founder who manages over $60 million in annual Amazon ad spend and asked not to be named due to active Amazon account relationships.

The critique echoes ongoing tension in the seller community following the FTC v. Amazon proceedings, in which internal documents revealed Amazon executives discussing how fee structures could be used to pressure sellers into advertising spend. While that case focused on the “Project Nessie” pricing algorithm, sellers say the cultural pattern it exposed has not disappeared.

Juozas Kaziukenas, founder of Marketplace Pulse, weighed in on the broader dynamic in a note to subscribers this week, writing that “Amazon’s fee architecture has become structurally punitive for mid-catalog operators, and the platform’s institutional memory of what sellers can absorb before they flee to Walmart or go DTC is becoming a competitive liability.”

What Are Sellers and Agencies Actually Doing to Prepare?

Regardless of whether Project Meridian materializes in its rumored form, the speculation alone has prompted a wave of operational moves across the seller community. Agency operators and brand owners describe a consistent set of defensive actions already underway:

• Running ASIN-level profitability audits through tools like Sellerboard and Jungle Scout‘s Profit Overview module to identify SKUs that would go negative under a 2-point referral fee increase.
• Accelerating enrollment in Amazon’s FBM backup for high-velocity SKUs to reduce FBA dependency ahead of any storage fee changes.
• Opening or expanding Walmart Fulfillment Services accounts as a hedge, with several operators reportedly moving 10-to-15% of inventory allocation toward Walmart in Q3 planning cycles.
• Pre-negotiating supplier cost reductions with Chinese and domestic suppliers to create margin buffer before Q4 pricing decisions lock in.
• Reducing long-term storage exposure by pushing promotional pricing on slow movers before any alleged 180-day penalty escalation takes effect.

For PPC-heavy brands, the concern extends beyond fees into ad efficiency. If referral fees rise in Home & Kitchen, the standard rule-of-thumb TACoS targets — many agencies operate at 12-to-18% for mature SKUs in the category — would need to compress further to maintain profitability, which sources say is already near-impossible for brands running against aggressive Chinese cross-border sellers on Sponsored Products.

When Could Amazon Officially Announce Project Meridian?

Sources are split on timing. One source with alleged proximity to Amazon’s Selling Partner Services team places a formal announcement in the July 14-to-August 7 window, consistent with Amazon’s historical pattern of releasing fee updates during low-news-cycle summer weeks. A second source suggests the changes may be bundled into Amazon’s annual fee announcement that typically accompanies the post-Prime Day operational memo — which in recent years has dropped in late July.

A third source, more skeptical of the entire narrative, says Project Meridian may be a real internal workstream that gets significantly scaled back before any public announcement. “Amazon tests a lot of things internally that never ship in the form the working groups envision them. The seller panic is probably ahead of whatever actually lands,” this source said.

What’s not in dispute is the anxiety level across the FBA ecosystem. Seller forums, agency Slack groups, and marketplace-focused newsletters have been running hot with Meridian speculation for the better part of three weeks. Whether the rumor proves accurate or dissolves into a more modest fee table tweak, the episode reveals something durable about the Amazon seller relationship in 2026: the information asymmetry between the platform and the operators who depend on it remains vast, and the trust deficit that asymmetry creates is now a business risk in its own right.

Ecommerce Times will continue to track Project Meridian developments. Amazon sellers with direct knowledge of internal fee discussions are encouraged to reach out via our secure tip line.