Sex worker

By borrowing dynamics from popular dating apps like Tinder, a Berlin-based start-up has created an app that customers can use to find a male or female prostitute.

Launched on 1 April, the app dubbed 'Peppr.it,' allows users to view profiles of sex workers near their current location.

Apart from allowing clients to search for male and female prostitutes, the app even goes to the extent of allowing people to filter out sex workers by body type, skin colour and special services.

While the sex workers don't have to pay a fee to be a part of the service, the app's owners will take a €5 or €10 booking fee from clients.

Pia Poppenreiter, the app's co-founder, was inspired to create it after she took a stroll through a red-light area in Berlin on a winter night.

"I was walking down Oranienburger Strasse - I know it sounds cheesy, but it's the truth - it was chilly and I saw the poor girls on the streets, and I thought, why isn't there an app? It's not efficient to wait outside," she told The Local.

"We're trying to revolutionise the image of sex work in general," she said. "We're trying to get it away from its shabby image."

She even went on to add that sex workers from escort agencies are required to talk to representatives from Peppr.it so as to confirm that they are not being forced into the occupation.

"We have a short conversation to get the feeling that this is voluntary and they are independent sex workers," she said - although she said that her company can't always guarantee this.

"We try to ask them - you kind of find out in a conversation whether they're doing it on a voluntary basis - we ask them what they did before, whether they've always worked voluntarily and so on," she said.