We built the room we wanted to be in.

Why this exists

Online dating solved discovery and never solved trust. You can meet ten thousand people and still have no idea whether any of them look like their photographs, are the age they claim, or are single. The apps know this. Their answer has generally been more people, faster.

We think the answer is fewer people, checked. Every member of Spousora has submitted six photographs to a fixed brief, handed over a government ID, and sat through a twenty-minute video call with a reviewer who compared the two. It takes about three days and a number of people do not get through. That is the product.

The standard

A reviewer is looking for one thing: that the person on the call is the person in the photographs, and that the photographs are recent and unedited. They are not judging whether someone is attractive, wealthy or interesting. There is no scoring, and no reviewer has a quota to fill.

• The face must match. The bare-face frame is checked against the portrait and against the ID.
• The body must match. The front and back pair are taken in the same outfit, in the same place, minutes apart.
• The document must be current. A passport, a driver’s licence or a NIN slip, in date and legible.
• The person must show up. Two missed interviews closes an application.

If somebody fails, they are told why in plain words and may apply again. We do not keep a blacklist of people who had a bad photograph.

What we will not do

We do not sell verification, we do not sell member data, and we do not run advertising against people’s profiles. The business is a membership fee, which means our incentive is for the room to stay worth paying for rather than to grow as fast as possible.

We also do not publish members. Nobody appears on this website, in a screenshot or in an advertisement unless they were asked directly and said yes. The handful shown on the home page all agreed.

Where we are

Spousora is built and reviewed from Lagos, Nigeria. Members join from across Nigeria, the wider continent, and the diaspora in the UK, the US and Canada — pricing follows the region you are in.

Talk to us

We read everything that comes in. If you have a question about the process, a concern about another member, or you are writing about us, get in touch — or email hello@spousora.com directly.