Smartphone dating app Tinder on Monday unveiled a premium paid subscription version called Tinder Plus, drawing severe criticism from the rivals over a pricing system that highly charges its older users.
Tinder Plus offers subscription fees that vary age-wise as well as country-wise. The subscription version is being tested since late 2014.
The American users who are under 30 require to pay USD 9.99 per month and the elderly subscribers need to pay USD 19.99, a Tinder spokeswoman said.
According to the spokesperson, the prices charged by the users will be as low as USD 2.99 in emerging markets.
Tinder spokeswoman Rosette Pambakian in a statement said, “We’ve priced Tinder Plus based on a combination of factors, including what we’ve learned through our testing, and we’ve found that these price points were adopted very well by certain age demographics…Lots of products offer differentiated price tiers by age, such as Spotify does for students, for example.”
“With Tinder Plus we’re giving our users access to their two most-requested features through Passport and Rewind, as well as unlimited liking capabilities,” the spokesperson said in the statement.
IAC-owned Tinder has not confirmed the reports, saying the app’s free version will be including advertising.
With the help of dating apps such as Tinder, the prospective daters get an opportunity to view the images of people who are nearby. If the users find someone of their suitability, they can simply swipe right to indicate interest. And if both the parties swipe right on the profiles of each other, they can then contact and start dating.