If you are located outside the United States and want to watch Amazon Instant Videos you might bump into a minor problem. In fact it will turn quite big, because Amazon requires you to have an American VISA or payment card to buy Instant Videos, and no matter if you use a VPN and have an American Amazon.com account, it is not enough. What can be done?
To fix this there are lots of articles on the web giving you ideas for what to do. This article started out telling you that you actually needed an American card number to get this working and that Entropay was the ideal solution for that, but then Entropay suddenly did not work anymore. So, if you want to buy Amazon Instant Videos and get the error message that an American Card is required, this is what you need to do!
Watch Instant Videos on Amazon without an American Card
- Visit Amazon.com and buy yourself a Gift Card.
- Send the Gift Card to yourself and add the money to your email address.
- Retrieve the gift card and add the money to your Amazon account.
- Delete all other cards connected to your account so that the only payment method remaining is the gift card.
- Try purchasing the video again and it should now be working!
Since you need to delete payment cards not from the USA registered to your account it might be smart to add a decent amount of money to your gift card at once, so that you will have money there to buy at least a couple of films. Later you can of course add a card again, but at the time when you want to buy Instant Videos from Amazon you can only have gift card money available!
Have you tried it? Did it work for you? Have any trouble? Just write and I would love to help you on. I am using this method myself so it really does work! Enjoy!
Read more about watching Amazon Instant Videos from abroad here, and there you can also read some more about paying for Amazon Instant Videos and the need for an American payment card for this to work.
There is another method available, which is a bit more complicated, requires more time and more money. But, it is the best as it will give you a real US VISA Prepaid Card and a valid US address. This can also be used for CBS All Access, Hulu, US Apple ID and much more. You can read about it here.
Thanks for the instructions. Just followed them and it worked!!
Glad to hear that!! Have fun watching Instant Videos!
Hi, I tried this method with Amazon video, not Instant Video, like this one, and it won’t work.
It requires you to enter a Payment Method. Any advice please? Thanks a lot.
What you write about is Instant Video as well (Amazon Video). Are you saying that you have money on your account (that is a gift card balance), but you are still not allowed to buy a film?
Yes exactly. I have the same issue. I have Amazon credit available to pay for video and receive this error message: “Your Amazon payment method settings do not appear to be active. Please update your payment method to complete this purchase.”. After contacting support I was told that you need US Credit Card on file to be able to buy/rent videos even though you will be paying using only your account credit. They mentioned it’s a DRM requirement. Is there any workaround?
Hello, I do not know of any method yet, but will update this article in case/when I find one 🙂
I just rented a film using my gift card balance and that worked fine. Do not forget to delete any other payment card from your account, making sure that the only possible way of paying is your gift card balance.
Hi there,
Received an email from Amazon stating there was an issue with my Prime Membership payment. I have an Entropay Visa loaded against the account AND a Gift Card. I emailed them to ask what the problem was and why the payment didn’t automatically go against the Gift Card. They said you cannot use a gift card for Amazon Prime membership payment.I could have sworn I did this when I renewed the membership last year but apparently not!)
So I was going to remove the Visa and leave just the gift card as you suggest, but based on Amazon’s response it seems like this won’t work anyway. Have you got any updates on this please? Thanks very much.
I did not know that you can not use a gift card balance to renew the AMazon Prime subscription. I thought you could… but, if they say you cant, then maybe you can not. I will find out in January because that is when my Prime subscription has to be renewed.
i found the same issue. if you go and insert a fake credit card into the service using something like “https://www.fakenamegenerator.com/gen-male-us-us.php” then after deleting the card. you should be able to now make purchases.
I can confirm this worked. Just what I needed to do on Amazon Video
It worked, just the way you wrote 😉 Tnx!
It worked for me… thanks!!!!
It just worked for me, thank you so much! 🙂
Ultimately I couldn’t use my gift voucher (this was before I saw the most recent posting in this) but I was successful in renewing my Prime service by using my Entropay card. Cheers.
So, you just used added entropay to your account and that allowed you to pay for your amazon prime? Did you have to do anything else? Mine is coming into the renewal time around Christmas time…
Thank you so much! I’ve been trying to rent a movie in Amazon Prime Video for months and occasionally giving up and following your instructions today I deleted the 2 credit cards I had there and it worked! It’s now using the credits I have in amazon gift card.
Glad to hear that… Enjoy watching!
Dude, thanks for those tips. Helped out a lot!
But, I actually found a different (more simplistic) way to do the same thing:
(In case it matters: I’m Austrian, owning no American CC)
— I loaded my Gift Card with the amount of money I needed, using my credit card
— After that I removed the CC from my payment options
— Hit Buy (in my case It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia season 1 thru 11)
— Et voilà !
I did it! Thank you so much. I really really appreciate your kindness!!!!!! You’ll have a good luck!
It worked!!! Thank you so much!
Excellent !
Used to work. Not anymore. You cannot buy Amazon Instant Videos with your Gift card balance and without having a legit US card.
That is true, you need a legit US card… Will update the article soon to reflect this information!