Online dating app Tinder is not only matching up potential suiters, but it is making it easier for them to meet up by giving them free COVID tests.

The matchmaking site has teamed up with Everlywell to give away 1,000 of the company’s COVID-19 Test Home Collection Kits for free to potential matches to check their virus status before they venture out on a date.

Love matches can request a test for themselves and their match before their date, starting on Saturday at 7 p.m. ET, where they will receive a code to claim their mail-in COVID test from the Tinder app.

According to Tinder, its members are itching to go on a date as the feature hit an all-time high in U.S. bios in February as daters looked to meet up with their matches. As of October 2020, more than 40% of Tinder members under the age of 30 had not yet met their match in person due to the coronavirus pandemic, the company said.

“The pandemic has created no shortage of dating obstacles, but we think our members are pretty optimistic about getting back out there; Jan. 3 swipe activity hit 3.4 billion, which was one of the busiest days of the entire pandemic,” Nicole Parlapiano, vice president of Marketing for North America at Tinder, said in a statement. “We’re excited to be working with Everlywell to make it easier for our members to go and meet their matches safely.”

Tinder has steadily been making changes to its app to make it safer to meet members, as its parent company Match Group (MTCH) announced on Monday that Garbo would be accessible to users of the platform in the U.S. later this year to perform background checks on potential love matches

Garbo was founded by a survivor of gender-based violence, Kathryn Kosmides, in 2018. The platform provides low-cost background checks by collecting public records and reports of violence or abuse, including incidents of arrests, convictions, restraining orders, harassment, and other violent crimes.

“Before Garbo, abusers were able to hide behind expensive, hard-to-find public records and reports of their violence; now that’s much harder,” said Kosmides. “Being able to reach historically underserved populations is fundamental to Garbo’s mission and the partnership with Match will help us connect with these communities.”

Garbo is also expected to be rolled out across other Match Group brands after it is adopted on Tinder, the company said.

Shares of Match Group were trading at $151.69 as of 12:15 p.m. ET, down $2.50, or 1.62%.

Match, the group that includes several leading apps such as Tinder, Hinge and Meetic, says it added more than a million users in the last quarter of 2020, up some 12 percent to around 11 million worldwide
Match, the group that includes several leading apps such as Tinder, Hinge and Meetic, says it added more than a million users in the last quarter of 2020, up some 12 percent to around 11 million worldwide AFP / LIONEL BONAVENTURE
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