Editor’s note: This article was first published in August 2014, describing Peppr as newly launched in Berlin with a booking fee of about 6 euros and possible expansion to other cities. These details reflect 2014, and the app may no longer exist.
When people talk about prostitution, many still associate it entirely with women enslaved by criminal gangs who need to be rescued. Sadly, that lucrative illegal market does exist, but it is even more true that the vast majority of prostitutes do not need to be rescued, but regulated. They also need to be given the security required to practise a profession they have chosen freely.
The reason prostitution is still in legal limbo in some countries today, and hypocritically treated as illegal in others even though everyone knows it exists, is how hard it is to control a market where transactions are made in cash precisely to guarantee a discreet service.
See also: The legalisation of prostitution comes up for debate in Spain
From Berlin, Germany, comes Peppr, a new app that makes life a little easier for prostitutes and for those who seek their services.
Above all, these entrepreneurs have tried at every turn to look after the wellbeing and safety of both the worker and her client. With the app, users can browse a full list of prostitutes in the area, with photos, physical descriptions, services and prices, and can see the ones closest to their own location.
Results can be filtered, and the appointment can be arranged within the app itself, booking a time for a fee of around €6.
But Peppr goes further than that.
Prostitutes have ratings left by previous users, as well as comments on the experience clients have had with each of them.
In the same way, the app gives prostitutes security, because troublesome and problematic clients are also “on file”. Prostitutes can warn one another about a violent client, since even when pseudonyms are used, Peppr records the phone number from which the transaction was made.
Likewise, if something serious happens, clients are no longer anonymous in the eyes of the law, so if a client hits a prostitute, the authorities can easily find him.
You could say it is a way for clients and prostitutes to have far more satisfying and risk-free encounters.
But it isn’t free of controversy.
As usually happens with businesses that sit in legal limbo, there is always controversy.
In some countries, such as the United States (except in a few states), advertising prostitution or facilitating access to it is completely prohibited.
Then there is the question of how the app should be interpreted legally. Peppr offers security to prostitutes and clients, arranges the encounter and charges a small commission for it, which could be read as a “tech pimp“, because even in countries where prostitution is not illegal, it is illegal for a third party to profit from it.
Still, legal technicalities aside, the truth is that this app offers a good service that solves some of the problems prostitutes had been asking to have solved. In Germany it is completely legal, and it may well make the jump to other cities or countries. Of course, Germany realised long ago that fighting this profession is pointless, so the government profits from it, having pioneered the installation of “parking meters” for prostitutes.
Without a doubt, a good business idea that solves part of the problem.
Further reading
- How to set up a brothel legally
- The camgirl business: staggering figures
Featured image: Ansgar Koreng / CC BY-SA 4.0, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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