Costco to increase membership fees for first time since 2017

Costco Wholesale Corp. is hiking its membership fees for the first time since 2017.

Annual fees for club members will go up by $5 to $10 in the U.S. and Canada, effective Sept. 1.

Gold Star, Business and Business add-on members will pay an annual fee of $65, and annual fees for Executive Memberships will increase from $120 to $130.

The maximum annual 2% reward associated with the Executive Membership will increase from $1,000 to $1,250.

Costco said the increase will impact some 52 million members, a little over half of which are executive. 

Wednesday’s (July 10) announcement came as the wholesaler reported net sales of $24.48 billion for the retail month of June, up from 7.4% last year.

Comparable sales for Canada increased 5.2%, and total company sales were up 5.3%. E-commerce sales increased 18.4%.