Starting next month, Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) will restrict Prime’s free shipping perk to household members only, phasing out its Prime Invitee program.
The shift mirrors streaming services like Netflix (NFLX) cracking down on password sharing and follows reports that Amazon fell short of Prime Day membership goals.
The company is replacing its Prime Invitee program with Amazon Family which offers free shipping and membership benefits to only one other adult in their household, up to four teens, and up to four profiles for children.
To share benefits, both the member and invitee must now reside in the same home. Any Amazon Invitee members who do not reside in the same home will need to create their own Prime membership at a discounted rate of $14.99 for the first year and then $14.99 per month afterwards.
In the company’s most recent quarterly results, subscription services revenue grew 12% year-over-year (including annual and monthly Amazon Prime memberships, digital video, audiobook, digital music, e-book, and other non-AWS subscription services).
While the company does not report on the number of new Prime memberships, industry data estimates an increase of nearly 5M U.S. Prime members in 2024 to ~172M.