Netflix Will No Longer Accept Payments From App Store Billing for Legacy Accounts

Luke Bouma, reporting for Cord Cutters News:

Are you one of the Netflix customers who still pay your Netflix bill through Apple? For years now, Netflix has not accepted new subscribers or rejoined members who want to use Apple to pay their bills. If you already had an active account, though, that paid through Apple you could continue to do so. Now, though, that seems to be coming to an end.

Today, Netflix started to inform customers that Apple will no longer be accepting Apple Pay through iTunes Subscriptions, for example.

Netflix stopped accepting new subscriptions from in-app purchases five years ago, but until now had allowed existing in-app subscriptions to keep going — and for many of those users, at lower prices than they currently offer.

Netflix and Apple used to be partners; now they’re rivals. Dropping support for the remaining legacy iTunes accounts isn’t nearly as big a deal as Netflix eschewing a native VisionOS app, but still, it’s a sign of how far apart the two companies are today. Apple TV didn’t have an App Store until the fourth-gen models (a.k.a. “Apple TV HD”) were introduced in 2015. But back in 2010, Apple included a Netflix “app” in the second-gen Apple TV, along with YouTube and Flickr. Those services were integrated right into the system software. That seems like forever ago.

Also, hats off to Cord Cutter News for their humility. Netflix’s stock was up 2 percent today. Surely that’s because this news came as “a relief to investors” — but Cord Cutter News took no credit for it.

★ Tuesday, 27 February 2024