Lexicon ·
Payers
noun, plural, a defined term in Match Group's annual report
- Stated meaning
- Users who bought a subscription or a single feature on one of the company's apps in a given month, counted app by app.
- Operating meaning
- The users a dating company earned money from that month, counted on a line of their own, which makes everyone else on the app what their money bought access to.
- Origin
- A defined term in the annual reports Match Group, owner of Tinder, Hinge and Plenty Of Fish, files with the Securities and Exchange Commission, read here in the report for 2023. It is a reporting term, and the record holds no use of it by the users it counts.
August 3, in a couples app. I subscribed to Paired for $39.99 for 1 year, so that we could get to know each other better, and invited her. She joined, and we used it daily for 7 days. The term was not used.
Match Group, whose annual report for 2023 (opens in a new window) lists Tinder, Hinge, Match, OkCupid and Plenty Of Fish among its brands, defines Payers as “unique users at a brand level in a given month from whom we earned Direct Revenue.” Direct Revenue is money “received directly from end users of our services,” from subscriptions and from features sold “on a pay-per-use, or à la carte, basis,” such as “the ability to promote themselves for a given period of time, or highlight themselves to a specific user.” Revenue Per Payer, or RPP, is “the average monthly revenue earned from a Payer.” A person who pays at 2 brands may be counted twice, because the company is “unable to identify unique individuals across brands.”
In 2023 the 2 lines moved in opposite directions. Payers fell 4%, and RPP rose 11%, from $15.97 to $17.67. Tinder’s Direct Revenue grew 7%, “driven by growth in RPP due to pricing optimizations in the U.S. market and new weekly subscription offerings, partially offset by a decrease in Payers partially attributed to the pricing optimizations.” Fewer people paid, each paid more, and the filing attributes both to the same optimizations.
Under load, the term sorts everyone on an app into 2 columns. A Payer is a customer. Everyone else is what the customer is shown, which is the reason for the purchase and appears nowhere in the revenue table. Two people who match on Tinder may be 1 Payer and 1 item of inventory, and the filing can tell which is which more reliably than either of them can. It cannot tell whether the Payer on Tinder is the same person as the Payer on Hinge.
On August 3 I became a payer, though not one of Match Group’s, at $39.99 for 365 days, paid in advance on day 105. Two of us used the app and 1 of us paid, which is the arrangement the filing’s 2 columns describe. We answered its questions every day for 7 days. The arrangement ended 10 days after the purchase, and 356 days of the subscription remain, worth $39.00 and not transferable. It expires in August 2027.