Closing the Gap on Age Verification in a Digital World

Navigating Innovation and Responsibility

Many of the pieces I write for this platform talk about how the pace of technological change provides enormous challenges for not only business owners, large and small, but also for policymakers, balancing the need for modernization and innovation, while also simultaneously protecting consumers. But just as often, I balance that by highlighting the tremendous opportunities that technological advancement offers us all.

The Tightrope for Small Businesses

We all know that small business owners – particularly those in consumer-facing industries – must navigate a very fine line between leveraging technology to enhance their business and still comply with new and often conflicting laws and regulations regarding the use of these technologies. With limited resources to vet new solutions that are compliant, it’s a daunting task.

The Growing Challenge of Age Verification

The retail and hospitality industries have a unique set of compliance challenges to age-verify sales of alcohol, tobacco, vape, cannabis, hemp-based products, and age-gated over-the-counter (OTC) products, especially in an age when fake IDs are incredibly realistic and widely available. Today, 90% of fake IDs now have barcodes that will pass a basic point-of-sale scan.

Industry Efforts to Stay Ahead

For decades, the convenience industry, in particular, has aggressively developed new technologies, educational programs, and platforms to ensure minors are prohibited from purchasing legal products meant for adult consumers. The retailer’s embrace of the We Card educational and training services platform and the Cops in Shops program are examples of how seriously the industry takes compliance.

A New Standard: TruAge®

While some technology advancements made compliance more challenging, new technology has emerged to take age verification to the next level. The National Association of Convenience Stores has partnered with Conexxus—the standards-setting body for convenience— and a consortium of age-restricted supplier partners to develop the next generation of responsible age verification called TruAge®.

A typical ID with a barcode contains 33+ personal data points that can be exposed, providing details about the customer, including name and address, which have nothing to do with verifying age. Meanwhile, TruAge uses encrypted, one-time-use digital tokens to verify that a customer is of legal age while protecting personal privacy. Rather than exposing the dozens of data fields typically captured in an ID scan, TruAge securely confirms age using only four data elements—driver’s license number, issuing state, date of birth, and expiration date—which are converted into an encrypted token that anonymizes the information and verifies eligibility. This approach minimizes human error from manual ID checks, detects invalid or expired IDs, provides court-admissible proof of age without storing personal information, and enables faster, more secure transactions at the point of sale.

Digital Credentials and the Future of Trust

Age verification becomes increasingly important in a digital world, and TruAge’s technology is the de facto global standard for digital age verification, according to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), an international council created in 1994 to create and publish web standards to ensure the growth and development of the web.

These digital credentials are increasingly important as communications and commerce continue to go digital because they can contain all the same information as physical credentials. Importantly, by adding technologies such as digital signatures used by TruAge, verifiable credentials can be tamper-proof and seen as more trusted than their physical counterparts.

A Call for Thoughtful Policymaking

For policymakers, new innovations like TruAge often require new thinking around existing guardrails. Next-generation age identification technology will call for revisiting previous important dialogues around mobile drivers’ licenses, privacy concerns, encryption standards, and the list goes on. As Newton’s Third Law of Motion tells us, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Similarly, every new technology deployed creates challenges and opportunities. Policymakers, particularly at the state level, have a rare opportunity to further protect our children from age-restricted products. We look forward to working with them to seize this opportunity.

Joe Kefauver is a senior advisor to Americans for a Modern Economy, an organization committed to ensuring that local, state, and federal policies reflect changing technologies that are reshaping the way consumers, businesses, and communities operate in the 21st-century economy.