- Netflix will soon start charging users for sharing passwords with people living outside their households
- Netflix will test two new features Add an Extra Member and Transfer Profile to a New Account in Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru
- Standard and Premium plan users can add up to two accounts for their family members or friends who don’t live with them.
It is very common for Netflix users to share their accounts with friends and family members, even colleagues. You might even be using someone else’s Netflix account by paying half or a quarter of the subscription plan. But Netflix doesn’t like that and the streaming giant has made that clear quite a few times in the past, but now it’s stepping up its game since it impacts Netflix’s ability to gain new, fully paying subscribers.
In a blog post titled, “Paying to Share Netflix Outside Your Household,” Netflix says that it knows users are sharing passwords with their friends and family who don’t live with them, and it’s hurting Netflix’s earnings. So, users need to pay extra money on top of their subscription charges if they want to share their passwords with someone outside their premises.
“We’ve always made it easy for people who live together to share their Netflix account, with features like separate profiles and multiple streams in our Standard and Premium plans. While these have been hugely popular, they have also created some confusion about when and how Netflix can be shared. As a result, accounts are being shared between households – impacting our ability to invest in great new TV and films for our members.”
Netflix wants users to pay a little amount on top of the plan fees to share the password with members outside their household. Netflix is introducing two new features, “Add an Extra Member” and “Transfer Profile to a New Account”, to overcome the problem of users sharing their password with anyone and everyone. The pilot testing for these two features will begin in Chile, Costa Rica and Peru in the coming weeks.
“So for the last year we’ve been working on ways to enable members who share outside their household to do so easily and securely, while also paying a bit more. And over the next few weeks, we’ll launch and test two new features for our members in Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru.”
With “Add an Extra Member,” users subscribed to Standard and Premium plans will be able to add two sub-accounts for people not living with them. Each user would have their own username and password. And it will cost users CLP 2,380 (approx Rs 225) in Chile, USD 2.99 in Costa Rica, and PEN 7.9 in Peru. Also, using “Transfer Profile to a New Account,” users can transfer the existing profile to a new account, keeping the user’s watch history, favourites, and personalized recommendations. This feature is available for Basic, Standard, and Premium plan members.
Netflix hasn’t said anything about when this feature will be coming to India. It would be interesting to see how Netflix would be implementing these features in India, considering it’s a bit price-sensitive market. Netflix reduced its prices in India while increasing it all over the globe, so again it would be interesting to see when and how Netflix would implement these new features to curb password sharing among friends and family.
