Age Verification – A Barrier to Prevent Under-Age Transactions

Since the easy access to the web, more children are frequently going online via more devices and services, at ever-younger ages. Like many other technologies, the internet offers enormous opportunities and advantages for kids, but it also offers threats to the security and well being of children. Evidence reports harm to children that are online, but addressing the threat factors isn’t easy because they’re often quite sensitive and difficult to manage. Their causes are different and long-term effects are tough to anticipate and multiple stakeholders are required for the solutions. Since the advent of the internet, criminals have been deceiving and exploiting users through fraudulent practices. Getting documents verified to prove identity is a necessary process that is long been exploited due to identity theft. How does AI make it foolproof again? Regulatory authorities are taking steps to set up restrictions to eliminate the danger of under-age transactions.

Research on Age Verification

The importance of age verification if often overlooked by many businessmen. In 2019, UK gambling firms paid £19.6m in penalties due to illegal money concealment and under-age gambling conducted on their platforms. Regulatory authorities are introducing stringent anti-money laundering (AML) and age-restricted selling regulations to eliminate the danger of cash laundering and under-age gambling addiction. As an example, the United Kingdom Gambling Commission amended the client identification and KYC regulations for online gambling sites. The new regulations require online gambling websites to verify the name, address, and age of their players before on-boarding them on their gaming platforms. 

After strict changes in the age verification regulations, the companies should gain in-depth knowledge about verification, its technique, and pros. All businesses should incorporate age-verification software in their systems due to one reason or another but are unaware of its value due to a scarcity of awareness. A study estimated that children are spending an amount of £64 million once a year without the permission of their parents, for transaction purposes. 4 out of 5 children are obtaining online goods through their parents’ bank cards, and PayPal accounts.

How is Age Verified Digitally?

Age Verification refers to the tactic through which the identification document of the user is screened to ascertain if the age and other information listed about the client is true or not. This process is typically performed manually or through a digital process. Another method is to verify the ages of customers by analyzing their facial features and establishing if the user is mature or not. Manual verification isn’t practiced commonly as it contains a high risk of human error and because the method is long and tedious. To cater to this concern, online age verification is adopted by many businesses and offices. It also enables the remote age verification of consumers from any corner of the world.

Many online retail stores place simple checks and transfer the responsibility of verification to their customers. The customers usually encounter the simple age confirmation checkboxes that are commonly found on the websites and applications. These checks are, unfortunately, not enough to validate the age of buyers. Therefore, modern digital age verification is effective in verifying the ages of all customers and detecting under-age customers. 

The digital verification in contrast to manual verification could also be a fast process and verifies the age of the customer in no quite 30 seconds. The age verification system requests the purchasers to display their identity documents like ID card, driver’s license, passport, etc bearing their information. The system then analyzes the document for the official format and cross matches the date of birth of the document with the one provided by the customer. Once the verification process is complete, the results are showed to the customer and saved within the back-office for record-keeping purposes.

Finally…

The importance of age-match verification services for businesses is usually understood by a recent incident where a 16-year-old stabbed a fellow school mate with a knife bought online. If the minor’s identity verification by the businesses before sending him the knife, this incident would have never happened. It is evident from the discussion above that access to online goods and services can’t be restricted by mere parental controls. Online businesses must share a spread of responsibilities in regulating their provision of goods or services. While merchants are ready to verify the age of their customers through IDs that are provided physically, online vendors find it particularly challenging to verify age online. However, with the introduction of digital age verification services, it’s increasingly becoming convenient for both, physical and digital businesses, to conduct verification also to satisfy the regulations of the regulatory authorities.