New York (CNN Business) — Netflix knows that you share your password. And soon you will have to start paying for that privilege.
For the past year, Netflix has been working on ways to “allow members who share [su cuenta] outside your home do it easily and safely, while paying a little more,” the company said in a blog post on wednesday.
As part of that effort, over the next two weeks Netflix will launch two test features in Chile, Costa Rica and Peru called “Additional Member” and “Profile Transfer.”
With “Additional Member,” people who subscribe to Netflix’s standard and premium plans can pay to add an account for up to two people they don’t live with.
These “extra” members will have access just like any other Netflix account, including access to their own profile and login, but at a discounted rate: 2,380 Chilean pesos in Chile, US$2.99 in Costa Rica and 7.9 suns in Peru. Netflix will not count these additional memberships toward its overall paid subscriber numbers, according to a company spokesperson.
Separately, the “Profile Transfer” option allows subscribers at any level to transfer their profile information, i.e. their viewing history, to a new account for which they would pay.
Netflix said in its blog post that features like separate profiles and multiple streams for its standard and premium plans were intended for people who live together, but “have created some confusion regarding when and how Netflix can be shared. As a result, accounts are being shared across households, which affects our ability to invest in new TV shows and movies for our members.
It’s a limited test for now, but Netflix said it will bring the features to these three markets to understand how well they work before potentially rolling them out to the rest of the world.
For much of its history, Netflix has turned a blind eye to password sharing. But now that the company serves nearly 222 million subscribers and competes in a saturated market, it is thinking of new ways to generate revenue from premium content so it can attract new users, keep old members happy and compete with rivals like Disney+.
Its investors are concerned regarding slowing growth. Netflix shares are down 41% this yearand the company issued a subscriber outlook in January that was weaker than expected.