What is PinkDate? Escorting agency on the blockchain

Crypto Finder chatted to PinkDate president Sarah Stevens to get the lowdown on PinkDate.

PinkDate is an escorting agency on the blockchain. Stevens explains what the platform is and how it works.

Interview from Blockchain Week London, 23 January 2018.

Read the transcript:

My name is Sarah Stevens and I'm the president of PinkDate, and we are an escorting agency on the blockchain.

So we are developing a web-based app that combines high-quality clients and high-quality escorts together in a single meeting place. And we are the best way for these clients and escorts to meet because we provide safety, security and efficiency in their meeting place.

There are a lot of services that exist to do this sort of thing.

So what problems are you solving that other places haven't?

Right, so a lot of places that are currently out there will have, say, a phone book. So you have an advertising platform and somebody can go and browse the number of escorts that are there and then they have to pick and choose and go through various contact methods (text, email, a web form, phone call) to try to get in touch with somebody.

There's another platform where they do a little bit of screening from the client perspective, but that information isn't made available to the escorts.

From my understanding of this business, they actually are on the side of the client if a date goes bad. So because their revenue comes from the clients and not the escorts, there was a little bit of conflict from that.

And then the other way that people can find them is review boards, which tends to really give inaccurate misrepresentations of an encounter between a client and an escort.

So you know, there's a search problem that people have. Then there's also a way to book people that could be efficient, and then there's a payment system.

So what PinkDate actually does – it combines a really nice interface in Tinder-like capabilities to search through and find a companion that you want to meet up with.

It provides the ability for clients to submit different levels of screening that's already there and stored in our secure database, and it provides a way for clients to pay for an escort date using cryptocurrency.

So in an instance where a date is multi-hours, which can cost several hundred to thousands of dollars, often times you have clients that don't want to go to the bank and withdraw a large amount of cash for this.

And it's not that great having an envelope on the table.

Yeah. You know it's one thing I hear from some clients, is that they don't like that transactional feeling.

I mean at the end of the day there is going to be some level of transaction to it. It's a service that you are providing after all.

But if we can go ahead and try to minimise some of that, then that's a great idea. And it also reduces some of the risk from the escort point of view. Because there have been many incidences of clients, you know, at the end of a date they steal back the money. They short the escort the cash and this sort of thing. So we're trying to reduce some of these problems.

Is it a pre-payment system then?

Generally it's a pre-payment system. So a client shows up for a date, they provide the donation in an envelope or somewhere else, and then the date will proceed.

Sorry, no I meant with you is it a pre-payment system?

Yes, so we collect a deposit. Our deposit is 20% of the booking fee.

So at the same time, the client knows that they're not going to get stiffed either.

Yeah, and so we actually have some policies in place for bad dates and refunds and this sort of thing.

If an escort cancels without sufficient notice, without a 24-hour notice, we provide a full refund on the client's booking deposit, which is fair.

And if the client cancels with less than 24-hour notice, we provide that deposit to the escort because the escort will have undergone some level of preparation.

Whether it's transportation to a venue or renting out an incall space, or you know something else, then we want to make sure that they feel they're getting something out of it as well.

And so where is your revenue coming from in this system?

Our revenue is the booking fee. So we take whatever the booking fee is. The escorts will set their own rate and we take 20% of that as part of our fees.

Whereas with a traditional agency, they're usually taking at least 40% and not really giving anything out of it. Because a traditional agency doesn't provide an escort with any screening or any real client information, the escort can actually choose. So you get sent on a call and you don't know who's behind the door and you're giving up 40% of your income for that.

So you say that you're matching high-quality clients and high-quality users or customers. So what's that validation system, what's that screening system? How do you decide what that means?

Right, so I just want to say that quality doesn't necessarily equal financial quality. It just means that the people that we allow onto our system are found to be, you know, they're going to honour the agreed-upon rate.

They're going to be good clients and good escorts, they're gonna play fair to each other. So that's what the quality means.

From the client standpoint, we've got three levels of screening that we're going to be offering.

The first base level which everybody will have is just an email and telephone number and a name, and we can do some background checks on that. It's not deep level background security, but we do have some methods that we can use for screening.

If somebody wants to move up another level, we can ask them to provide references from other providers that they have seen and so that will be on their file.

And then if they want to move up another level, they can provide either a government ID or some sort of a valid social media profile. A lot of clients actually do give things like LinkedIn or their Facebook, or a driver's licence. I've seen a lot of that.

And our justification for asking for these things is, somebody can go ahead and sign off with just the base but they're going to be limited in the number of people they can contact. And chances are the escorts are going to want something more from them.

So do you have that kind of grading system I've seen before where the more information you offer for security purposes, the more features you can access, the more business you will get, or you will see more available options?

Correct, yeah.