Amazon Prime has been progressively beefing up their digital offering, and the service is much more than just 2 day free delivery nowadays. The service has become quite interesting even for people who are not physically located in the US.
Unfortunately, Amazon have been restricting prime subscriptions to people with a US credit card… until recently.
Amazon recently introduced the “gift of prime” concept which lets people subscribe to prime without a credit card, and the following loophole lets you subscribe to Amazon prime without having a US credit card or a us billing address.
The idea is that we’re going to buy an Amazon gift certificate first, then use that gift certificate to purchase an Amazon Prime subscription “gift”, that we will send to ourselves. Sounds complicated? It’s not.
Give it a try: if you try to buy a prime gift subscription from Amazon with a non US credit card, you will most likely see an error message like this: (If you don’t, good for you, you’re all set).
The next thing that people would typically attempt is to lie about their billing address on their Credit Card, and use a fake US address. Depending on your bank, this might work, but most likely it won’t. I actually don’t recommend even trying that, as it could mark you as “frauded” from Amazon’s perspective, making future digital purchases difficult for you.
Instead, we’re going to use a tiny loophole, here are the steps:
- First, buy yourself a $99 gift card from Amazon. This works with any Card, including your foreign Credit card. The gift code should come in your email inbox within a few minutes.
- (Optional) go to your account to edit your credit card’s billing address. You will replace your credit card billing address with a random US address (google for one, pick a hotel or something like that)
- Add a prime gift subscription to your cart, and enter your email address as the recipient
- Use your gift balance of $99 as a payment method. This here is the magic loophole.
- Amazon should now let you through. You will receive your prime Code in an email, and can redeem it. This is it, you’re a US prime member now, and can start enjoying the free Amazon prime videos.
Note: This works because in step 4, Amazon doesn’t seem to check your IP or contact your bank for credit card information. If step 4 doesn’t work, make sure you update your billing address to a fake US one in step 2.
Please report your experience using this trick!
Note: this was heavily inspired by this article to buy PSN Codes using the same type of trick!
Disclaimer: to the best of my knowledge, this trick is legal and works. Nevertheless, it is not our intent to engage you in any sort of illegal activity. This trick was working at the time of writing, we cannot be held responsible for any change happening that could result in the loophole being closed. Use your money wisely, and don’t blame us for your choices!
Comments
One response to “how to subscribe to Amazon Prime outside of the US”
Hey there, for me it worked without gift card from outside the us.
Here is what I did:
I logged in amazon.com with my normal account data from outside us.
Subscribed the month free Prime thing.
It worked I watched the free stuff with a DNS service on my TV.
But I could not rent any movies it said for rental you need a US credit card.
Then few days before the free month I was afraid that my credit card would not work for the $ 99 fee as it’s not working for the rental thing. Then I canceled membership to not get in trouble lol
And now few month later I logged back in and clicked on start prime membership (hoping I get another free month lol) but it said charge is $99 clicked on it (thinking this can not work) and it worked. It is a European credit card. So now I have amazon prime instant for a year but can’t rent any stuff, they say you need an us address and us credit card for that with the one click option.
So it seems you only need an us card for the rental stuff not the subscription fee.
Is it possible to rent movies with the gift card? That would cool just to load it up in case you wanna rent few movies if necessary. Then it would be a full membership with all the advantages.
But still I think that’s great for one or two years you have lot’s of stuff to watch for free.
Not sure if this will work for others maybe just worked for me.
The only thing I should mention is it’s not the ordinary credit card it’s one that directly withdraws money from your account dunno if that’s relevant but it is a VISA card.
I am just 3 days in the subscription, so I dunno if they will come after me or anything lol but It hink not cuz they want your money 😉 Still try at your own risk.
Can’t believe it worked.
Happy watching 🙂