Netflix subscribers in India now have the option to pay for monthly streaming service subscriptions automatically, according to a Tuesday (Aug. 31) report from India Today. By switching to AutoPay, Indian customers can have their payments automatically deducted from their Unified Payments Interface (UPI) account, according to the report. The new payment option is accessible for Android users, as well as customers using Netflix.com.
AutoPay options for streaming subscription services like Netflix are commonplace in the U.S. A March survey showed that the global subscription market could reach $228 billion in 2021, marking a more than 30 percent increase from $174 billion last year. By 2025, the market is expected to skyrocket to $481 billion.
With people spending more time at home in the wake of the pandemic, the amount of time viewers spend streaming videos from Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu and YouTube had more than doubled year over year from 2019 to 2020. A separate July 2020 poll found that roughly one-third of U.S. households had cut their cable TV in favor of subscription-based services. Cost is the main driver behind the about-face from cable to streaming, as cable or satellite TV costs more than $100 per month on average, compared to approximately $40 per month for streaming services.
Keeping track of payments and due dates for multiple video subscriptions can be challenging for subscribers, further underlining the importance of AutoPay features.
Adding this automatic billing feature in India will likely pay off, given that Netflix’s strongest region of growth came from the Asia-Pacific market, which accounted for two-thirds of the company’s global paid subscriptions during the second quarter of 2021, according to PYMNTS. Netflix increased its number of subscribers by 17 percent for a total of 209 million total paid monthly subscriptions, according to PYMNTS.
See also: Netflix Attributes Mixed Q2 Result to ‘Choppiness in Our Growth’ Created by COVID
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