Netflix is ​​testing a way to charge for sharing passwords in three countries

In Chile, Costa Rica and Peru, subscribers will need to pay a fee in addition to their monthly subscription to be able to add up to two additional accounts to their profile.

Indulgence is no longer appropriate for the American streaming giant. Netflix announced on Wednesday that it will conduct trials in Chile, Costa Rica and Peru to charge customers for sharing their passwords outside their homes. Subscribers will need to pay an amount in addition to their monthly subscription (approximately $3 in Chile, $2.99 ??in Costa Rica and approximately $2.12 in Peru) to be able to add up to two additional accounts to their profile.

“We’ve always made it easy for people who live together to share their Netflix accounts with features like separate profiles and simultaneous streams for our Standard and Premium subscriptions,” Chengyi Long, director of product innovation, said in a statement. at Netflix.

“While these features are hugely popular, they also created a form of confusion about when and how Netflix could be shared,” she added. “As a result, accounts are split between different households, which affects our ability to invest in quality series and movies for our members.”

In addition to paid password sharing, the Californian group will offer a service in the three test countries to transfer a profile to a new account in order to encourage the beneficiaries of password sharing to create their own subscription.

Stagnating growth

Last year, Netflix tested a way to limit the sharing of passwords by sending certain customers a warning message to verify that the user lived in the same place as the owner of the account.

After having long been lenient on the subject, Netflix seems ready to tighten the screw when its growth is running out of steam. The American company only gained 8.2 million paid accounts from September to December last year to end the year at 221 million and is increasingly facing competition from Disney +.

Netflix increased the price of its subscriptions in the United States and Canada in January, then did the same in March in the United Kingdom and Ireland. The prices offered by Netflix are generally higher than those of its rivals, but unlike most of them, the platform does not show any advertising.

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