Amazon is now offering monthly subscriptions for its Prime membership services, in a move designed to compete with offerings from competitors such as Netflix.
The new service has also been priced below Netflix in a bid to lure customers, with Prime Video service offered at $8.99 per month and including movie and TV show streaming.
Customers availing the service can take full benefits of the Prime service, which includes with free 2-day shopping, same day delivery in some cities, cloud storage and streaming music.
Although Amazon Prime has been successful, there are customers who are not yet ready to shell out $99 for the Prime yearly subscription.
Those customers who opt for the $8.99 per month package will pay almost $9 more than the yearly subscription, while those who opt for the $10.99 per month package will be paying about $30 more than the annual fee.
The Seattle-based tech company confirmed that it will not change or remove the yearly subscription after the monthly subscription roll out.
In order to make monthly payments easier, Amazon has entered into an agreement with Sprint to add the monthly Amazon subscription to their Sprint phone bills. This way, customers will be able to pay their subscriptions easily.
In the initial days when Amazon started its TV and movie stream services, they struggled in terms of content and users when compared to competitor Netflix.
But now, Amazon has improved its video content to compete with Netflix. Presently, it has obtained rights for Downtown Abbey and Mr. Robot, with these shows not available on Netflix.
Both Amazon and Netflix have also invested in original content such as Transparent and Mozart in the Jungle.
The news of monthly subscriptions by Amazon Prime also comes at a time when Netflix has plans to hike its subscription price from $7.99 to $9.99 starting this May.
