Netflix to Charge Extra for Account Sharing in 100+ Countries

AGI – Netflix has announced that its users in about 100 other countries they will have to pay extra to share their service access codes with people outside their household. This is an initiative of the company as part of its strategy to increase revenues.

Netflix has been testing this new formula for a year and has already implemented it in Canada in particular, after a 2022 closed with a loss of subscribers in the first half of the year, only to recover in the second half. “More than 100 million households share their account, which impacts our ability to invest in great movies and TV series,” Netflix said in a February statement.

Pricing and strategy

Prices vary from country to country. US households will have to pay nearly $8 more per month for a guest to use their account. “Your Netflix account is for you and the people who live with youi.e. your family nucleus”, reads the email that the platform is sending to all interested subscribers.

Those who are “an extra user” in Italy will have to pay an additional cost of 4.99 euros per month, writes Netflix in the email it has started sending to its subscribers in Italy.

The message also indicates the two possible solutions for those who already share their identifiers: they can add an additional subscriber by paying the supplement, or transfer the profile of a person outside the family unit. The latter will have to subscribe to its subscription, while keeping its profile unchanged.

Netflix further specifies that subscribers will still be able to watch their shows even when they’re on the go. The American company, which has more than 232 million subscribers, added a cheaper subscription with ads in late 2022, after years of reluctance. According to the company, this mode now has nearly 5 million monthly active users.

However, the strategy of limiting password sharing had lagged behind. However, testing and rollouts in Latin America and more recently Canada have been successful, according to Greg Peters, co-CEO of the company.

“At first there were some unsubscribes. Then people using borrowed credentials create their own accounts and add profiles, and we catch up in terms of subscriptions and revenues,” he assured during a conference with analysts ad April.

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