• Tinder announced today that is starting to test video chat in its dating app, a feature called Face to Face;
• The new feature is now available in the three Latin American countries, in addition to other markets worldwide;
• In April, Tinder also started to allow all members to connect with any user in the world for free through its passport feature, as a manner to tackle social distancing effects on its business.

American dating app Tinder announced this Wednesday it will start testing video chat in its app in some select markets such as Brazil, Peru and Chile. Starting today, Australia, Spain, Italy, France, Vietnam, Indonesia, Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and some members in the US will also take part in the test rollout.

Back in the announcement of Q1 results, Tinder’s parent company Match had already pledged that would adopt video chat as a way of tackling the pandemic’s effect in the company business. The dating app ended the first quarter of the year with 6 million subscribers, up from 5.9 million in December 2019. On a year-over-year comparison, Tinder added just 100,000 paid subscribers in Q1, against 384,000 new paid users in Q1 2019.

“The virus has had a number of effects on our business, including necessitating that most of our global employees work from home, higher levels of engagement among users of our products to make virtual connections, increased acceptance of video chat for dating, and lower levels of new users signing up and propensity to pay,” stated the firm in its Q1 earnings report. In April, Tinder also started to allow all members to connect with any user in the world for free through its passport feature.