Americans will get a little more time to share Netflix passwords with family members as the streaming video service announced Wednesday changes in several other countries.
The changes affect customers in Canada, New Zealand, Portugal and Spain. Netflix previously made changes in Latin America. The changes mean that users must set up their primary internet connection.
Netflix’s standard service will allow for two simultaneous streams, as customers can create up to five profiles. The company said customers in the same household can continue watching simultaneous streams.
They also say customers can continue using Netflix while on vacation.
Those in countries affected by the change can add an extra member subaccount for up to two people they don’t live with — each with a profile.
At some point, these changes could impact U.S. customers.
"Part of it is just what we call casual sharing, which is people could pay, but they don't need to, and so they're borrowing somebody's account," said Gregory K. Peters, Netflix co-CEO. "So our job is to give them a little bit of a nudge and to create features that make transitioning to their own account easy and simple."
Analysts at Cowen Inc. estimate that by adding in that extra fee for account-sharing users in North America, Netflix could make an additional $721 million in revenue this year.
