Amazon Prime Video monthly subscription and free trial discontinued due to RBI guidelines

Amazon has announced that it will no longer offer Amazon Prime free trial and monthly subscription in India, now customers can only purchase 3 month and annual prime membership. The decision has been taken due to an RBI mandate regarding recurring payments.

New member sign-ups for the free Amazon Prime trial have been stopped since April 27. The monthly price for Prime membership was Rs 129, now users looking for a shorter duration prime subscription would have to pay Rs 329 for 3 months or go with the annual plan of Rs 999. 

According to the new Reserve Bank of India (RBI) guidelines, banks and financial institutions are required to implement an additional factor of authentication for recurring payments. The deadline for implementation of this mandate has been set for September 30.

These guidelines were initially announced back in August 2019 with a transaction limit of Rs 2,000 but later deferred and the transaction limit was raised to Rs 5,000 for automatic recurring payments, any amount above that limit would require an additional one-time password (OTP).