When it comes online retail, one has to know that in such an age of fast-moving technology and increasing accessibility to products and services online, there is nothing that is not available online these days. Businesses need to understand that adult content or alcohol is not even the half of it. There is a significant portion of products and services available online that are largely age restrictive. Herein comes the need for business to utilise a reliable age verification service.

A lot of businesses leave age verification to their couriers or to simple ID checks which can be tricked by smart teenagers looking to buy alcohol online or to avail any other service for that matter. Services or products generally available online that need to be put age restrictions to include alcohol, adult content, dating websites, gambling services, online gaming, pharmaceuticals, weapons, inflammable substances and PG-rated entertainment. Alarmingly, a study found that more than half of e-commerce sites fail to verify their buyer’s age.

Age Verification – A Growing Concern

It isn’t that most of such websites do not put safeguards against age; most of them do as they are required to do so legally. However, in most cases, such safeguards are bypassed by clever underage visitors, determined to buy age restrictive products and services.

One method used by websites is a simple popup on entering, that verifies a user’s age from their social media account. In such cases, underage users often make sure to increase their age on their SM accounts. In other cases, websites require users to make accounts or to enter their credit card details to purchase services. Some will also use email verification to verify the online user, wherein the registered user will receive an email to check if they are the ones using a particular product or service.

The Need for Reliable Age Verification Service

There is an increasing need for online businesses to build a sound and robust system where they can verify their users’ or buyer’s age. More recently, businesses have also been made legally bound, if not morally. In December of 2018, the UK government managed to approve legislation that now requires businesses and age restrictive online services to adopt age verification measures. Moreover, in the case of products, a lot of businesses outsource their courier services and therefore leave the delivery person to perform an identity check of the buyer. But not all delivery services may deem themselves to be liable to do so. Thus the need for a reliable age verification service.

Read: Why 2 Factor Authentication is vital for Online Identity Risk Management?

Failure to comply with legal restrictions placed on online businesses to verify their user’s age can open them to huge repercussions that are not only legally damaging but can be a blow to their reputation as well. It is also necessary to understand that stuff like adult content and alcohol are not the only age restrictive substances that are sold online. Online gambling, gaming and pharmaceuticals and weapons can also fall under this umbrella. The necessity of online age verification for such businesses can be understood by the incident where a 16-year-old ended up stabbing a fellow school mate with a knife he bought from Amazon.

How to Implement Age Verification Checks Online?

In a growingly tech-savvy environment, identity verification solutions have become increasingly convenient. With ID verification services businesses can now implement multiple layers of checks to verify a customer’s age. Shufti Pro’s identity verification services include document verification along with face verification. This enables businesses to implement verifying checks to corroborate a user’s age.

Through Shufti Pro’s age verification service, businesses can ask the user to scan his/her ID document wherein our AI based authentication protocols will scan the user’s date of birth to determine their age. After corroborating their age the verification software will ask for the user’s face verification wherein the facial recognition software will scan the user’s face in real time. Our facial recognition software uses liveness detection and 3D depth analysis to verify if the user is the same person whose ID was shown initially. All these identity checks are performed by the software in realtime that will not waste a single second of the user’s time.

Are Age Verification Services Secure?

Online age verification is a completely secure method to verify online users’ age. For both the business and the end user, such a service can enable them to implement safer and ethical business practices. All identity verification services are legally bound by data protection laws to keep a user’s data secure. No third party is allowed access to such data and

With growing legal and moral implications, it is imperative for online businesses to employ an age verification service for all sorts of age restrictive content. In doing so they may be able to avoid any legal or moral repercussions not to mention maintain good credit to their name.