The pace of technological change provides enormous opportunities—but at the same time creates equally enormous challenges as data is increasingly seen as currency. Small business owners 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 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.
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 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.
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-plus 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.
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.
Best of all, there is no cost to use TruAge, whether you are a consumer or a small business like a convenience store. There’s no cost per scan, per store, or per lookup—no license fees, no transaction fees and no new hardware required. Retailers can activate TruAge within their existing point-of-sale systems, making it easy to strengthen compliance, protect customer privacy and keep checkout moving quickly without adding new costs or complexity
As “owners” of the point-of-sale space, retailers will continue to have an outsized responsibility—and liability—when it comes to age verification and youth access prevention. Technology has afforded us another easy opportunity to more effectively protect our employees, our consumers and our businesses. Let’s take advantage of it.
Stephanie Sikorski is the CEO of TruAge and the vice president of strategic initiatives for the National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS). She has nearly 25 years of experience in strategic innovation, marketing and communications. Reach her at ssikorski@convenience.org.
Members help make our journalism possible. Become a CSP member today and unlock exclusive benefits, including unlimited access to all of our content. Sign up here.