Frequently Asked Questions

Marshmallo extracts your name, date of birth, gender and height. We also extract the photo of you on the ID, but we do not extract or retain a photo of the entire ID.

We use the information to pre-populate your profile, to prevent catfishing and to exclude registered offenders.

We do not extract or store your driver’s license number, passport number or address.

We use a third party identity verification provider called Persona who is also used by major banks. Persona is SOC-2 compliant which is business speak for secure. Read Persona's security, privacy, and compliance overview.

The basic features of Marshmallo are free and always will be. In fact, a majority of our users pay nothing.

Marshmallo makes money by charging for optional premium features like super likes, advanced filters and see who likes me.

We have a detailed page dedicated to dating safety features. In short, we verify people’s government-issued photo IDs to prevent catfishing and deter bad people from joining. We exclude registered sex offenders and we limit unreciprocated messages to prevent harassment. At your option, we limit the visibility of some of the information on your profile to people with matching answers to protect your privacy. We also keep your first name private until you match and we never share your last name.

Yes, if you are 17, your profile is only viewable to members who are 18 or younger.

These protections are on by default and cannot be disabled. We are more cautious when it comes to protecting our youngest members.

Marshmallo allows people to send only one message to new matches. If your match responds, you can send unlimited messages. Marshmallo limits new matches to one message because sometimes people have second thoughts and do not want to engage with somebody even though they matched. There are many people on Marshmallo, and we are confident that you will find people who are interested in talking to and meeting you even if you experience some rejection along the way.

Marshmallo is hosted in a mature and secure cloud environment. By leveraging cloud infrastructure, we can bring years of experience to protecting your data. We safeguard your personal information with the latest encryption protocols like Advanced Encryption Standard (AES 256) and Transport Layer Security (TLS). All your data is secured in transit and at rest.

Marshmallo prioritizes user safety. Marshmallo is the first free dating app that verifies every members’ name, date of birth and photo ID. The internet is a great way to meet new people, but it is not without its hazards. Marshmallo makes sure everybody is who they say they are, so you can make new relationships safely.

Upon signing up, every member is required to take a picture of their government-issued photo ID and a selfie. Marshmallo verifies the name, date of birth and photo id of all members in order to eliminate anybody who would engage in bad behavior like scamming people out of money or preying on young people.

We use the same sophisticated identification technology as major financial institutions. Among other advanced techniques, the technology scans the machine readable zone (“MRZ”) and uses optical character recognition (“OCR”) to detect fake IDs.

We also check over 300 registered sex offender registries to exclude over 700,000 registered sex offenders.

Yes. You must be at least 17 years old and have a government-issued photo ID to join Marshmallo.

If you are 17, your profile is only viewable to members who are 18 or younger.

These protections are on by default and cannot be disabled. We are more cautious when it comes to protecting our youngest members.

You must provide a valid state or national government approved photo ID. This could be a driver's license, passport or state or national ID card. You can’t register with a library card or student ID.

No, you must provide a valid state or national government approved photo ID. This could be a driver's license, passport or state or national ID card.

We use the name on your photo ID because that is what we have verified. If you prefer to be called by something else, we recommend you say so in your biography.

Until you match with somebody, we only share your first intial.

Some people may want to limit the visibility of some of their personal information to people with a matching answer This is an option for people who seek a dating website, similar to Jswype or Christian Mingle. Sharing some information about yourself can help find better matches, but we understand that people, for whatever reason, may not want to disclose information about themselves more broadly than necessary. We hope this feature will make people more comfortable disclosing information about themselves in order to facilitate better matches.