We’ve all had that cringeworthy moment where you accidentally send a ridiculously petty message about someone...to the very person you’re talking about.

Gmail allows you to rescind a message with its “undo send” feature but the same can’t be done for text messages. That’s why Confide, an off-the-record messenger launched a message retraction feature on Thursday.

Jon Brod, co-founder and CEO of Confide, tells Yahoo Finance that this new feature is a direct result of user feedback. Several app users said they wished they could take back those messages they sent preemptively or unintentionally. Of course, you can only take back the message if the recipient hasn't read it yet.

Message retraction is Confide’s first premium feature, which means it’s an in-app purchase for $2.99 a month. The app itself is free. “We’re able to add a high value feature for pretty nominal cost to our users and test out monetization that way,” Brod says.

Launched in January 2014, Confide is an ephemeral messaging app that first debuted with text only, resembling an email format, but now has the option to share photos and documents. Last summer it added a desktop capability in addition to its mobile app. “We’ve had two years of growth and we’re now just starting to test monetization,” says Brod.

Brod said he has raised an additional $1.6 million in funding, led by WGI, SV Angels, Howard Lerman (a co-founder of Confide) and CrunchFund. The company has raised $3.6 million to date.

Though Brod did not disclose specific numbers on user demographics, he says the app is being used in 15 languages in 180 countries. Over half of its users are overseas.

Sizing up competition
Confide’s primary competitor is CyberDust, an encrypted message service created by entrepreneur and Dallas Mavericks basketball team owner Mark Cuban. Brod, however, says Confide doesn’t quite fall into the same category as CyberDust (that’s “more like a billionaire’s weekend hobby,” he says).

Then of course there’s Snapchat, valued at $16 billion. Considering 71% of Snapchat users are under 34, Brod says there’s huge opportunity for an ephemeral messaging app with the non-millennial generation.