ONLINE streaming service company, Netflix has stated that, it recorded a loss of 39, 451 users in 40 days, a loss the company attributes to commercial banks suspension on the use of naira card in the country.
In a reply to a Freedom of Information (FoI) enquiry by News Point Nigeria on Tuesday, Netflix Nigeria subscription data revealed that over 39,000 subscribers didn’t renew their subscription over the last 40 days, dating from December 05th, 2022 to January 15th, 2023, although the information didn’t give a breakdown of their subscription plans, the figure delineates an estimated loss of over N250m.
News Point Nigeria reports that several commercial banks in the country suspended further use of naira card for international transactions. Top on the list of these banks are; Zenith Bank, GTBank, First Bank and others.
According to these banks, they will no longer support international online and Point of Sale transactions on such cards but their dollar cards will still be supporting international transactions.
The banks stated that, the persistent Foreign Exchange (FX) pressure occasioned by dollar supply shortage has resulted in the suspending or reviewing down their international transactions on naira cards.
This move by the Nigerian banks has resulted into a big loss for the online streaming company as most of their users fail to renew their subscription and information obtained shows a growing subscription of 287,050 (two hundred and eighty seven thousand fifty) users in Nigeria as at September 2022, with ranging plans of Netflix Mobile Plan at N1,200; Basic Plan at N2,900; Standard Plan at N3,600 and Premium Plan at N4,400.
The data further revealed that 34 per cent of these users do annual and quarterly subscriptions, which for most of them, ended in December 2022 but to dismay of Netflix, there hasn’t been renewals from these users over two weeks into the new year despite their continuous mail reminders.
It is an established fact that most of these users rely on their naira cards for subscriptions, and with this latest suspension on naira-denominated cards, a good number of them will not be able to renew their subscriptions when it expires or for many of them as data obtained shows, after it expired.
Not just Netflix, News Point Nigeria gathered that a lot of Nigerians cannot pay for dollar-denominated services such as streaming services, application fees, magazine subscriptions, domain renewal, etc. with their naira cards.
Some of these users would have no choice but to turn to the parallel market to continue to enjoy subscription services like Netflix, but how many Nigerians do know these other optional channels of subscriptions. And for those who do, there is a fear of whether or not such channels can be trusted with the safety of their financial details.
A tech expert, who did not want to be named, claimed he has been having issues renewing international subscriptions, which his business depends on. According to him, he has had to try different products to enable him to renew his subscriptions.
He explained, “I was using Gomoney but it stopped working. I just discovered Grey, which was launched recently. My wife and kids have been on my neck for their Netflix renewal and I had to find a way to do it”.
Another Netflix user, Fatima, a supermarket attendant said, “my work has been boring because I couldn’t renew my Netflix last week, but, I turned to reading novels now”.
Netflix is available in almost every country on the planet, and its app or website runs on most of the devices that connect to the internet. Those apps are also some of the most easy-to-use of any service.
That doesn’t mean it’s always simple to choose something to watch, but when it comes to swapping profiles or simply picking up where you left off, it doesn’t get better than Netflix. If you’re heading off the grid — or onto a plane — then you can easily download most (but not all) of its content to watch on your iOS or Android device.
Netflix has over 500 Nollywood movies on its site and had produced or co-produced over 25 of such movies, the data revealed.