Tinder is expanding its identity verification program to users in the United States, United Kingdom, Brazil and Mexico, the company announced Tuesday. The program serves as an extra step for users to verify the authenticity of their profiles on dating apps and receive a blue verified checkmark. Tinder plans to make the feature available in the US and Mexico by summer, and in the UK and Brazil by spring.
This enhancement comes as artificial intelligence is finding it increasingly difficult to determine what is real and what is fake. It also comes as the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reported last year that romance scams will cost $1.3 billion in 2022, with a median reported loss of $4,400.
Tinder first piloted an identity verification program in Australia and New Zealand last fall. The company found that users who completed the ID verification option had a 67% increase in the number of matches compared to users who were not verified.
To verify your identity on the app, you must provide a selfie video and a valid driver's license or passport. A third-party vendor then checks whether the face in the video selfie matches both the ID photo and the person's profile photo. The verification process also verifies the ID's date of birth.
Image credits: crater
The ID verification tool is not to be confused with Tinder's photo verification feature, which allows users to prove to others that they are not a bot or a catfish. When Tinder first launched photo verification, users had to follow instructions to pose and take a photo of themselves in order to be verified on the dating app. But Tinder tightened the process last year by requiring a selfie video instead of a photo.
Tinder currently states that users who only complete photo verification for the app will receive a blue camera icon badge, and users who only complete ID verification will receive a blue ID icon badge. Users who have completed both ID and photo verification will be shown with a blue checkmark.
By adding ID verification to its dating app, Tinder aims to give users more confidence that they are talking to a real person and not a scammer or catfish.
Tinder announced in 2021 that it planned to make voluntary ID verification available globally in the future, so today's announcement isn't necessarily a surprise. The company has been developing its identity verification tool for years since first launching it in Japan in 2019, where identity verification is required by law. It makes sense for Tinder to expand his ID verification to more countries, especially with his AI scams and romance scams on the rise.