Payment terms

1. Who this is with

This agreement is between you and Pila Studio UG (haftungsbeschränkt), a company with limited liability registered in Germany, which operates Date to Marry. It sits alongside our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Where this agreement and the Terms of Service differ on money, this agreement governs.

2. What is free

None of the following costs anything, for anyone, at any point:

• Downloading the app and creating an account
• Answering the intake questions and completing your profile
• Verifying your identity with a government-issued document. We pay for that check before you have paid us anything
• Being matched, reading the reasons we chose someone, and declining an introduction
• Your partner journal and your private check-ins, and exporting both, for as long as you have an account

You will never be asked for money in order to be seen, to be matched, or to say no.

3. The search fee

The search fee is a single payment, made the first time you accept an introduction. It is charged at the moment you say yes, before the other person’s answer is known. That timing is deliberate: a conversation only opens when both people have said yes, and because each of you paid at your own yes, nobody ever waits on the other person’s payment and nobody is ever asked to pay because someone is waiting for them.

The fee is for your search, not for a particular person. If the person you accepted does not accept you, or we withdraw the introduction before you have spoken, your search continues and nothing more is charged. If a relationship that began here ends, your next search costs nothing.

It never renews. The fee buys a paid membership of twelve months from the day you pay. When those twelve months end, the paid contract is complete: nothing is charged and nothing renews. From then on your introductions continue free of charge for as long as you are still searching, without you having to ask, until you marry or leave. That continuation is a free service we give every member who has paid; you owe nothing for it, and you can stop it at any time. So the fee covers every introduction we make you.

There is no subscription, no upgrade, no boost, no placement and no other purchase available to a single member. Section 8 lists what we will never sell.

4. What the search fee costs, by country

A flat price would be a fortnight of income in some of the countries this app is built for and an afternoon’s in others, so the search fee is banded by purchasing power. The stake is meant to be roughly the same sacrifice everywhere, and members in every band share one pool.

Your band is set by the country of your App Store or Google Play account. Not by where you happen to be, your IP address, the language you read the app in, or anything you type. The store charges the price for that country in its own currency: in a country that uses the euro, the price in the table; anywhere else, the store’s equivalent of it, including the taxes the store collects there. The price the store shows you before you pay is the price you pay.

Every country the App Store and Google Play sell in has a band. The countries above are examples; one we have not named is placed in the band its income per head, measured at purchasing-power parity, falls in.

In the United States the search fee is priced in dollars: $119.99 in the app. It is also the one country where the app may offer to take you to this website to pay instead, where the price is $99.99, paid through Stripe. The in-app price is higher because Apple and Google take a commission on payments made through their stores. What you get is identical either way.

5. What the search fee is not

It is not a fee for arranging a marriage, and nothing is ever payable on the event of a marriage. German law (§656 BGB) is explicit that a promise of payment for brokering a marriage creates no enforceable obligation, and we neither ask for nor rely on any such promise. You are paying for access to a service and for the work we do inside it.

It is not a guarantee. We do not promise that an introduction will lead to a relationship or a relationship to a marriage, and no part of the fee is held back against that outcome. What we promise instead is structural: the fee never renews, so a member who is still searching is our cost and never our income.

6. What a couple pays

The day you match, this stops being a dating app. The searching interface goes away and what remains was built for two people. Some of it is free forever and some of it is bought, once, by the couple:

• When you both confirm you are continuing, one purchase unlocks the courtship tools for that stage: the guided conversations, milestones, date nights and gesture ideas.
• If you become engaged, one purchase unlocks the preparation programme for marriage.

Each is one purchase per couple, not per person. Either of you may make it, it covers both of you, and it is priced at the lower of your two bands. The price is shown to you before you buy, and we publish it here as soon as it is set. No couple has reached that stage yet, and we would rather set the number with the first ones than invent it now.

A stage is only ever paid for once. If a relationship ends after you have bought a stage, that stage is yours again in your next relationship here without paying.

Your journal and your private check-ins are never behind a payment. They are your own writing about your own relationship, and charging you to read them would be indefensible.

7. Sessions with counsellors and mentors

A directory of licensed counsellors and a mentor community are being built and are not open yet. When they open, sessions with a person are paid per session, at a price shown before you book, under the practitioner’s own terms as well as ours. Nothing about them renews, and nothing is charged until you book one. We will say clearly, here and in the app, on the day they open.

8. What we will never sell

• Boosts, or anything that moves you up a queue
• Extra visibility, placements or a tier above another member’s
• Seeing who liked you, super likes or attention tokens
• Read receipts as a paid feature
• A renewal of any kind
• Advertising, or your data

The only thing we could sell you is a better chance than the next person. That is the one thing that would ruin this.

9. Funded and gifted searches

Asking for one. A member who cannot afford the search fee may ask for it to be covered, by writing to hello@datetomarry.app from the address on their account. A person decides, not a system, and no reason is required. Asking is never recorded against you and never affects how you are matched. Whether we can say yes depends on what we can afford to give, and we will tell you plainly either way rather than keep you waiting.

Paying for someone else, and funding a stranger. These are not open yet. When they open we will say so here and in the app, and these terms will then set out how they work before anyone can use them. In outline: anyone will be able to pay the search fee for a named member, and a fee paid for someone else will be refundable only to the person who paid it. A member who marries someone they met here will be asked once, and only once, whether they would like to fund another person’s search. That will be a voluntary gift with no obligation, no invoice and no consequence for declining; it will never be a payment for the marriage itself (section 5), and because we are a company and not a charity it will not be tax-deductible. Money given that way will fund searches for members who ask, and nothing else.

Once there is a number to publish, this page will show how many searches have been funded and how many gifted.

10. Your right to change your mind

If you are a consumer, you have the following right. We give it to every member, wherever you live, and where the law of your country gives you more, you have that too.

What “in proportion” means here. The full coverage of a contract for the search fee is the twelve months of paid membership in section 3. If you asked us to begin and then withdraw, you pay only for the days that had passed when you told us, as a share of those twelve months: withdraw on the tenth day and you pay ten three-hundred-and-sixty-fifths of the fee, and we return the rest. Nothing is counted per introduction, and nothing is charged for the questions you answered or the checks we ran before you paid. For a couple’s purchase, the full coverage is the stage it unlocks, measured the same way from the day of purchase to the day the stage would ordinarily end, as stated when you buy it.

Asking us to begin. By paying, you ask us to begin at once, and you acknowledge that your right of withdrawal ends once the service has been fully provided. Nothing more is asked of you in the app. Because the paid membership runs for twelve months, it is not fully provided within fourteen days, so asking us to begin does not take your right of withdrawal away: it only means the proportionate amount above is due if you use it. We confirm your request by email with the confirmation of your contract.

Paying through Apple or Google. If you paid in the app, the store took the payment. You can withdraw by writing to us as above, and we refund you ourselves, by bank transfer if the store will not reverse the payment, at no cost to you. You may instead ask the store for a refund under its own policy; if it refunds you, the search fee is simply cancelled.

Why we give this to everyone. The law of the European Union and the United Kingdom requires it. We apply it to every member wherever they live, because a promise that depends on your country is not much of one.

11. When we return everything

There are situations where keeping your money would be wrong. In each of these we refund the search fee in full, and you do not have to ask:

• You paid twice. The second payment is returned in full
• We discover after you have paid that you are in a country we are not able to serve
• Your account is closed by us for a reason that is ours and not yours, such as a failure on our side that we cannot repair

If a member dies or becomes unable to manage their affairs, their estate or representative may request the search fee back in full on production of reasonable evidence. It would be indecent to apply any condition to that.

Where the law of your state or country gives you further cancellation or refund rights, for example a right to cancel a dating-service contract within three business days, those rights apply in full and we honour them.

12. Leaving

You may end your membership whenever you wish and without notice, and delete your account from inside the app. After the withdrawal period, leaving does not by itself create a refund, beyond your rights under sections 10 and 11. Where the law that protects you lets you end a contract of this kind early and requires the part not yet provided to be refunded, you have that right, and the part not yet provided is calculated by the days remaining of the twelve months, as in section 10.

If you come back later under the same verified identity, your fee still stands: we do not charge a second search fee to a person who has already paid one, unless we refunded the first.

13. Paying through the App Store or Google Play

Outside the United States the search fee is paid inside the iPhone or Android app. In the United States you may also pay on this website, at the lower price shown in section 4: the in-app price is higher because Apple and Google take a commission on payments made through their stores. Everything else in this agreement applies identically.

Purchases made through a store are also subject to that store’s own refund policy. Where a refund is owed to you under this agreement and the store will not make it, we make it ourselves, by the original means of payment where we can and by bank transfer where we cannot.

14. Disputing a payment

You may dispute a payment with your bank or card issuer at any time, and doing so does not affect your account. If you think something has gone wrong, please write to hello@datetomarry.app first: it is faster, and we would rather fix it ourselves.

15. Deleting your account

You may delete your account at any time and we will erase your profile. We are required by German commercial and tax law to keep records of payments for up to ten years, so billing records survive deletion. If you rejoin later under the same verified identity, section 12 applies and your search fee is not charged again.

16. Changes to this agreement

The version in force when you bought is the version that governs what you bought. Every version is kept with the dates it applied. If we change these terms, the new version applies only to purchases made after it takes effect, and we tell members about it at least thirty days before then. A change that only benefits you, or that the law requires sooner, may take effect sooner, and we say when it does.

17. Governing law and disputes

This agreement is governed by the laws of the Federal Republic of Germany, without prejudice to the mandatory consumer protections of the country in which you live. If you are unhappy, write to hello@datetomarry.app and we will try to settle it directly.

We are not obliged to take part in dispute resolution proceedings before a consumer arbitration board, and we do not currently do so.

18. Contact

Pila Studio UG (haftungsbeschränkt) · hello@datetomarry.app for anything about payments, refunds or funded searches.

19. If you live in the United States

These rights are in addition to everything else on this page. Where your state’s law gives you more, you have that too.

Cancelling in the first seven days. You may cancel a purchase for a full refund, without any penalty or obligation, within seven days of buying it, and in any case until midnight of our third business day after the date of the contract, excluding Sundays and holidays. Tell us by email to hello@datetomarry.app, or by post to the address in the notice at the top of this page; you may use the notice of cancellation form below. After that, section 10 applies until the fourteenth day.

Refunds within ten days. When you cancel or withdraw, we refund you within ten business days of receiving your notice. If you paid through Apple or Google and the store does not refund you, we refund you ourselves.

If no introduction comes (New York). If you live in New York and we make you no introduction for two successive months while your account is active and verified, you may cancel and receive a refund of what you paid, less a cancellation fee of fifteen percent of the price.

Putting your membership on hold. You may put your membership on hold for up to one year by pausing your account in the app’s Settings. While it is on hold you are not introduced to anyone, and the time on hold does not count against your membership.

If you move. If you move permanently to a place where we cannot introduce you to anyone, you may end your membership and we refund the part not yet provided, calculated as in section 10.

Death or disability. If you die, or become disabled so that you cannot use the Service, you or your estate may ask for a full refund (section 11).

Your information. We will not sell, assign or otherwise transfer to anyone, for their own business or any other purpose, any personal or private information we receive from you, including your answers to questions, your photographs and your background, without your prior written consent. The service providers listed in our Privacy Policy process it only on our behalf and on our instructions.

Dating Service Consumer Bill of Rights. Read it here.