ATLANTA—CDE Services Inc., a payment solutions provider of processing, point-of-sale payment equipment and support services, will deploy proof-of-age solution TruAge™, which enhances current age-verification systems and protects user privacy, to single and multilocation convenience stores, bodegas, small grocers and other retailers nationwide.

Developed by NACS and Conexxus, its standards-setting partner, TruAge is an innovative, universally accepted age-verification system that makes it more accurate to verify an adult customer's age when purchasing age-restricted products, and at the same time makes identity theft difficult. One-time-use digital tokens are used to share only the most important elements to confirm the purchaser is of legal age, while also protecting the user's privacy.

"CDE will provide a streamlined, simple and reliable rollout of the TruAge age-verification solution to merchants of any size, with a focus on the 27,000 small businesses and retail chains that we service nationwide," said Joe Cohane, CEO of CDE. "About 60% of the convenience stores operating in the U.S. are single-store operators. With CDE's implementation of TruAge, these retailers will be able to benefit from the protection and effectiveness of the solution, by having the flexibility to implement the age-verification platform in a full range of POS environments."

TruAge makes the traditional carding experience more reliable and accurate. The age-verification program is free to retailers, consumers and point-of-sale providers to ensure access and to help facilitate broad adoption of the program.

For more than 50 years, NACS has led efforts to restrict youth access to age-restricted products, from launching training programs and videos to co-founding the We Card program. We Card is supporting NACS in its effort to bring TruAge to market. TruAge is supported by more than 120 retail companies and six major manufacturers of age-restricted products.

"The convenience retailing industry conducts 165 million transactions a day, and 50 million of them involve an age-restricted product. It is exciting to announce that TruAge will be implemented into thousands of stores that conduct age-restricted transactions," said TruAge CEO Kyle McKeen.

Learn more about the TruAge program and opportunities to participate at www.convenience.org/TruAge.