In 2019, the General Office for Population and Family Planning released a prediction that by 2050, Vietnam will lack about 4.3 million women.

Countries with an imbalanced sex ratio are lucrative markets for online dating apps, which have seen two- to three-digit growth rates according to recent reports.

Globally, the social distancing caused by the Covid-19 pandemic since the beginning of the year has created a strong wave of using dating apps. In the last three months, Tinder, a dating app, has been among the top 3 apps in terms of revenue, just after YouTube and TikTok, according to Sensor Tower.

The online dating market is so lucrative that even Facebook has jumped on the bandwagon. It is expected to receive revenue of $2.7 billion in 2020. Meanwhile, Tinder alone got $1.2 billion in revenue in 2019, a growth rate of 43 percent over the year before.

According to Statista, the Vietnamese market will have revenue of $18 million this year, while $34 million is expected for 2024, which means an annual growth rate of 16.9 percent.

The figure is the highest in Southeast Asia, and even higher than Singapore ($7.1 million), and Indonesia and Malaysia ($5.8 million), according to App Annie.

Tinder is one of the first dating apps in Vietnam. It has been followed by a series of other apps, both well known and unknown, from both Vietnamese and foreign developers.

The common characteristic of the apps is that they lure people to use the app and pay money into accounts to be able to make friends with good-looking girls.

Many apps use chatbots and counterfeited images to fool users. Due to Google's lax control, many dating apps are rampant on Play Store, seeking opportunities to trick users.

Dating apps allow men and women to match with others, provided that they have enough time and pay money into VIP accounts.

Dating apps attract Vietnamese men who have plenty of time and money and want to seek nonbinding relations such as FWB (friend with benefits), 419 (for one night) or ONS (one night stand), or sugar daddy - sugar baby. 

Phuong Nguyen

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