Age-restricted goods and services are increasingly available online. The companies behind these products are under pressure to comply with an array of regulations designed to protect minors from accessing age-inappropriate products and content.
Businesses seeking to ensure compliance with global age restrictions using identity verification solutions face a complex market with numerous options. This complexity often leads to confusion, particularly around age assurance solutions.
To help companies make accurate decisions, Liminal released a Link Index™ for Age Verification that serves as a benchmark for top vendors in the age verification industry.
As the only data provider named as a leading vendor in this Index for its ability to meet the growing demands of age assurance, Data Zoo's age verification solution provides a comprehensive and reliable way to help organizations meet compliance requirements across ever-evolving global regulatory environments.
Data Zoo scored strongly in strategy, product, and market presence and was rated exceptional in maintaining effective end-user experiences. The report acknowledged Data Zoo’s global reach, global portfolio of data from over 150 sources, commitment to security and accuracy with user experience as key benefits.
So, what can companies learn from this Index and what do they need to know to make the right decision for their age verification needs?
Key Challenges
Age verification services are crucial for protecting minors from things like underage gambling and adult content and ensuring compliance with legal regulations.
Age verification is not only an important protection against illegal purchases or consumption of content, but also ensures businesses know their customers’ accurate demographic information.
Companies cannot risk revenues by creating complicated age verification gateways that turn off legitimate customers. As such, they need to design a user experience that ensures accuracy but does not deter legitimate users from providing the required information to make purchases or consume information.
In addition, AI provides malicious actors with increasing capabilities and tools to evade standard verification systems For example, deepfake content is up 3,000% since 2022, made even more possible by generative AI. Combating this growing threat requires a unique approach that pairs a positive user experience with accuracy and privacy.
How Data Verification Improves Technological Advancements
The digitization of products and services created a need for robust identification tools to prevent fraud or misuse, especially in regulated industries and those that sell products intended for a certain age.
The rise of AI adds a wrinkle to fraud, improving fraudulent documents’ appearance of authenticity. Companies cannot merely scan documents and take the information contained within at face value. They need a layered approach that utilizes data verification to confirm the validity of all documents, eliminating those that are AI generated or forged.
By leveraging data verification tools, vendors can capture customer details, such as name and address, phone numbers or email addresses, last four digits of SSN and other unique international identifiers entered during checkout and cross-reference them against public records in multiple countries.
This enables companies to verify most users’ age without requiring users to do anything other than supply easily remembered information.
AI is also emerging as an important part of age verification. AI models are trained to identify best-possible data sources to verify individuals who cannot be verified through traditional means and can be used when businesses need to scan and verify identity documents.
The ultimate goal for any age verification solution is to help businesses comply with age verification regulations while maintaining an efficient checkout process.
Leading Solutions
Companies in varied industries have a regulatory and brand safety responsibility to ensure users meet minimum age requirements to use their products and services. Most importantly, vendors need to provide a flexible solution that is fit-for-purpose, so they can restrict access to underage audiences while not creating unnecessary hurdles for age-appropriate visitors.
Data Zoo's age verification solution improves match accuracy by validating against a diverse global portfolio of data from over 150 sources and guarantees protection for the age-restricted goods and services. That way, businesses can focus on their core needs while being assured that they are keeping their customers safe and meeting all regulations.
Data Zoo verifies by extracting customer data and pre-validating user input, immediately flagging an age-related issue as part of the overall solution. Getting approved users to relevant products and services quicker leads to increased revenues and higher customer satisfaction while eliminating inappropriate or illegal access.
The threats companies face today explains why industry experts predict the age verification market will grow from $5.7 billion in 2025 to $10.4 billion by 2029 with a 17.3% CAGR.
With more critical threats than ever, companies need to make the smart decision regarding age verification.
Learn more about the report here. And partner with Data Zoo today to simplify your age verification process while staying ahead of regulatory and user experience expectations.