Amazon Prime membership can now be purchased as a gift

Timed for the holidays, Amazon.com has begun letting users send each other Amazon Prime memberships as gifts.

Amazon Prime is a $79 service sold by the Seattle online retailer that gives members a number of benefits including free shipping on purchases.

With Amazon Prime, users get free two-day shipping on 15 million of the items sold on Amazon.com. Users can also stream 41,000 movies and shows, much like they can with Netflix. Users also get access to “borrow� books from the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library’s catalog of 350,000 e-books.

PHOTOS: Top 10 ways to take advantage of the ‘sharing economy’

Amazon Prime has been available to customers since 2005, but users couldn’t give the membership as a gift.

“Members have told us they want to give the gift of Prime and we are delighted to offer this new capability in time for the holidays,� said Greg Greeley, Amazon Prime vice president, in a statement.

Amazon Prime membership can be purchased as a gift on this page on the Amazon website. Customers then add the Amazon Prime membership to their online cart, enter their recipient’s email address and select a delivery date for the gift. On that day, Amazon will shoot an email to the recipient that will include instructions for how the user can redeem the gift.

ALSO:

Apple selling unlocked iPhone 5s smartphones without a SIM card

AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint to stop charging for ‘premium’ text messages

Sprint is the worst cellphone service provider, Consumer Reports says