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(CNN Spanish) --
Netflix is clear: the use of shared accounts as we know it now (that is, simply giving your email and password to someone else to use your account) is a serious threat to the company.
On January 19, in the presentation of its results for the last quarter of 2022, the streaming company said that this way of sharing accounts "weakens" its long-term capacity, since more than 100 million households share an account and this Simply put, it translates to lost profit.
"The widespread use of shared accounts today (more than 100 million households) weakens our long-term ability to invest in and improve Netflix, as well as to develop our business," the company said in a letter to its shareholders. .
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To put it in perspective, if those 100 million households share the account with at least one person, that's an extra 100 million users who aren't paying, and they represent almost half of Netflix's 230 million paying subscribers in total (up to December 2022).
For this reason, Netflix has been implementing new ways to attack this problem, for example, the "Add a house" option that was available in Argentina until it was discontinued in October.
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However, there is another option that is being tested since March 2022 and that will be key (along with the recent Netflix service with ads that is cheaper) to end the use of shared accounts.
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In March of last year, Netflix introduced a new feature in three Latin American countries—Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru—so that subscribers there could share their account outside the home "easily and securely, while also paying a little more." ".
This is the "Add Extra Member" or "Extra Members" function, with which you can basically share your account with people outside of your household, but paying an extra amount for each member added.
It should be noted that, according to Netflix rules, a paying subscriber's account can only be shared with people who live in the same household as the subscriber in question.
However, if an account is currently shared in most of the countries where this streaming service is located, nothing may happen or a request will arrive to verify the device to be sure that it is not a misuse of the service. account, as the company's Help Center points out.
From March to date, this function is only available in those three countries in the region.
But Netflix reported in the January shareholder letter that later in the current quarter (January-February-March 2023) it expects to "start rolling out paid sharing (i.e. the 'extra members' feature) on a regular basis." more generalized".
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In which countries is account sharing no longer allowed without paying?
When reviewing the company's Help Center, CNN confirmed that, of the more than 190 countries and territories where there is Netflix, only the three mentioned (Chile, Costa Rica and Peru) have the "extra members" function enabled.
In those three countries, subscribers of the Standard and Premium paid plans are allowed to add up to two extra members, each with their own account, which is actually a "subaccount" linked to the main account with virtually all the benefits that a normal account (you just don't have control of the subscription).
For each extra member, the subscriber with the main account will have to pay an additional amount:
Chile: 2,380 Chilean pesos
Costa Rica: US$2.99
Peru: 7.9 Peruvian soles
If you were sharing your account without paying and opted for this feature, you can transfer your profile from the main account to your new sub-account, so you don't lose your series progress and keep your personalized recommendations.
In this section we will add the countries that are rolling out this function in 2023.
With reporting from CNN's Clare Duffy
Netflix
