Expanding Online Business with the Right Age Verification

Sumsub Team

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Alcohol, cigarettes, knives, adult content, and other restricted items are safeguarded from minors offline—but how about protecting the privacy of the same content online?

In this day and age, businesses are working to create a safer online environment by keeping younger, age-inappropriate users out with sophisticated verification tools while maintaining the frictionless user experience and confident conversion rates.

A brief on age verification

Age verification is a restrictive measure used to protect and cut access to digitally available content for those who don’t fit the required age mark. Various age verification systems are used to hide certain content from underage users. The type of this inappropriate content can be:

Alcohol and tobacco advertising;
Some social media networks with objectionable content;
Internet pornography and any adult-oriented content;
Adult video games;
Content that fits online privacy laws that manage the collection of certain personal information from children.

Why businesses need to know the user’s age

Age verification keeps companies up to date with the latest requirements, state laws, and merchant account policies. The result of non-compliance can be fines up to millions of dollars depending on how serious the case is.

Companies quite often implement KYC services such as age verification to set the age brackets a particular user falls in and separate underage users from their target group as unnecessary user traffic.

Some of the cases when age verification is applied:

Banks and insurance services incorporate age verification services for individuals to sign-up for age-specific services such as old age health care plans, retirement fund registration, and many more similar packages;
E-commerce websites conduct age verification to research which category of products is more famous with particular age clients;
Online bettings and casinos must verify age before customers can gamble and deposit money as stated in the LCCP (License Conditions and Codes of Practice).

With just a picture Sumsub age verification solution shows ± 3 years accuracy, drastically increasing conversion and helping to maintain a competitive edge. Have a look at our demo, so we can show how to make your business safer.

Ways to verify user’s age

Age request. Usually, with plug-in systems the user is asked for their tentative age or a date of birth to sign up for a service, platform, or register with an online business;
Credit card details. Sometimes a platform asks for user’s credit card information, assuming that credit card companies do not issue cards to minors. Although there is still a possibility that a minor can sneak out parent’s credit card information to pass as an adult; or a fraudster can illegally obtain card details to use it for their own malevolent purposes;
Instant and secure KYC. Meanwhile, the basic KYC system checks for the authenticity and facial verification of the ID document provided by the end-user. Apart from that, an advanced KYC software will also check the age of a user to be certain that the date of birth provided by the user is correct.