In an attempt to crack down on password sharing outside of households, Netflix will be launching a test in select countries that will prompt primary account holders to pay an additional fee to add other users outside of their own home, Variety reports.
The test will only be launched in Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru, and will have users pay a fee of $2.99 to add a sub-member outside of the household. Chengyi Long, director of product innovation at Netflix, shared a blog post about the upcoming experiment, where she explained that this is the company’s way of trying to make it easier to share an account.
“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,” Long wrote. “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.”
Long also clarified that these tests are only being done so Netflix can observe the effectiveness of adding the optional fee. “We’ll be working to understand the utility of these two features for members in these three countries before making changes anywhere else in the world,” she added.
Netflix is also using the three countries to test a feature that would allow users to transfer profiles to other accounts in another effort to limit password sharing. There are still no plans to administer any of these changes permanently across other countries as well.
