Special report: carrier billing for dating services in 2019

Dating apps have come to stay (for now, anyways). When Tinder revolutionized the dating scene over five years ago, many people were sceptical about the rise of this new technosexual era. It was predicted that dating through apps can’t lead to long-term relationship success.

The time has proved if not the opposite, then at least that these fears did not come true. Just two years after launching in 2012, Tinder was registering more than a billion "swipes" a day. Even tech giants such as Facebook have become interested in the dating scene after seeing Tinder’s success. There are 200M users on Facebook who list their relationship status as “single.”

Dating apps are now a firmly established part of the dating scene. These include Tinder, Bumble, Hinge and a range of others suited to different tastes. The basis of these apps is simple. Users can create a profile by uploading several photos, along with a short text description. This becomes visible to other users who can then ‘like’ or ‘dislike’ the profile.

In this report, we give an overview of how carrier billing fits into the existing monetization strategy of dating services. We profile the markets with the biggest potential for carrier billing, also highlighting end-user spending trends for each market. Finally, the report explains how mobile operators - often the biggest consumer-facing digital companies in their country - can help dating services increase user acquisition and revenue through marketing support, once a dating service provider has decided to implement carrier billing.

About Fortumo

Fortumo is a digital enablement platform for app stores and digital service providers for user acquisition, monetization and retention. The company connects service providers with more than 350 mobile operators across Asia, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa.

Service providers use Fortumo’s platform to manage the end-to-end customer lifecycle of mobile users on these networks through the company’s bundling, carrier billing and messaging solutions.

Fortumo’s platform is used by thousands of leading digital merchants including Google, Spotify, Electronic Arts and EasyPark. Founded in 2007, Fortumo has offices in San Francisco, Madrid, Beijing, Delhi, Singapore, Estonia, Hanoi and Taipei. For more information, please visit Fortumo.com.