Netflix announced Tuesday that users in a hundred countries will now have to pay more to share their passwords for the platform with people outside their household, as part of its strategy to diversify its income.
The streaming service has been testing this new formula in a handful of countries for a year, and has already implemented it in Canada, after a difficult year 2022.
“A Netflix account is for use by one household only,” the company said in a statement.
Netflix said that more than 100 million households shared accounts on the service earlier this year, “affecting our ability to invest in new TV shows and movies.”
Netflix has experimented with “borrowing” or “sharing” accounts, where subscribers can add additional users for a higher price or transfer viewing profiles to separate accounts, in some markets. On Tuesday, he announced that he was expanding the policy to more than 100 countries.
With Netflix’s growth cooling off last year, the Silicon Valley, California-based online streaming company set out to encourage people who were watching for free with shared passwords to start paying for the service without alienating subscribers.
“This account sharing initiative helps us build a larger base of potential paying members and grow Netflix for the long term,” said Co-CEO Ted Sarandos.
The TV broadcasting giant recently told financial analysts that it had delayed a broad campaign against account password sharing “to improve the member experience.”
In this sense, Netflix stated that it made sure that subscribers had seamless access to the service outside the home or on various devices, such as tablets, televisions or smartphones.
In April the company had reported that its number of subscribers reached a record 232.5 million in the first quarter of the year and that its new ad-supported division was doing well.