Transactional sex refers to sexual relationships where the giving and/or receiving of gifts, money or other services is an important factor. The participants do not necessarily frame themselves in terms of prostitutes/clients, but often as girlfriends/boyfriends, or sugar babies/sugar daddies/mamas.^[1][2] Those offering sex may or may not feel affection for their partners.

Transactional sex is a superset of sex work, in that the exchange of monetary reward for sex includes a broader set of (usually non-marital) obligations that do not necessarily involve a predetermined payment or gift, but where there is a definite motivation to benefit materially from the sexual exchange.^[3]

Alcohol has been used as a currency for transactional sex in South Africa and Uganda.^[4][5][6]

• Casting couch
• Enjo kōsai
• Hypergamy
• Kept woman
• Prostitution among animals
• Sex for fish
• Sugar baby
• Treating (dating)

• Chatterji, Minki; Murray, Nancy; London, David and Anglewicz. Philip The Factors Influencing Transactional Sex Among Young Men and Women in 12 Sub-Saharan African Countries, POLICY Project, October 2004. (pdf)
• Cole, Jennifer (2010). Sex and Salvation: Imagining the Future in Madagascar. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226113319.
• Epstein, Helen. "The Fidelity Fix", first published in the New York Times, June 13, 2004
• Groes-Green, Christian (6 February 2013). "To Put Men in a Bottle: Eroticism, Kinship, Female Power, and Transactional Sex in Maputo, Mozambique". American Ethnologist. 40 (1): 102–117. doi:10.1111/amet.12008.
• Groes-Green, Christian (30 April 2014). "Journeys of Patronage: Moral Economies of Transactional Sex, Kinship and Female Migration from Mozambique to Europe". Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. 20 (2): 237–255. doi:10.1111/1467-9655.12102.
• Hoefinger, Heidi (July 2010). Negotiating Intimacy: Transactional Sex and Relationships Among Cambodian Professional Girlfriends (PhD dissertation thesis). Goldsmiths, University of London.
• Hoefinger, Heidi (2013). Sex, Love and Money in Cambodia: Professional Girlfriends and Transactional Relationships. London: Routledge. ISBN 9781317931232.
• Hunter, Mark (2002). "The Materiality of Everyday Sex: Thinking Beyond 'Prostitution". African Studies. 61 (1): 99–120. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.581.2594. doi:10.1080/00020180220140091. S2CID 146274779.
• Leclerc-Madlala, Suzanne (2003). "Transactional Sex and the Pursuit of Modernity". Social Dynamics: A Journal of African Studies. 29 (2): 213–233. doi:10.1080/02533950308628681. hdl:11427/19269. S2CID 143986646.
• Luke, N.; Kurz, K. Cross-generational and transactional sexual relations in Sub-Saharan Africa: prevalence of behavior and implications for negotiating safer sexual practices. International Center for Research on Women (ICRW), USA, 2002. (pdf)