A Smarter Approach to Age Verification

To learn how training and technology can work together to support responsible retailing, NACS Media spoke with Doug Anderson, president of We Card, and Stephanie Sikorski, CEO of TruAge, about the future of age verification.

How are expectations around age verification changing?

Doug Anderson: Customers are becoming more accustomed to presenting their ID for scanning, but they also want to understand how their personal information is being handled. We Card developed in-store signage that alerts customers to ID scanning and helps set consistent expectations.

If a customer’s driver’s license is going to be scanned, taking the additional step of displaying a “We SCAN IDs” message clearly communicates what customers can expect at checkout. Information about data privacy should also be communicated upfront or be readily available from trained employees when customers have questions.

What technology shifts are having a big impact today?

Stephanie Sikorski: We're seeing strong momentum from consumers around wanting a privacy-forward digital identity. Consumers are increasingly concerned about where their data goes and how it's used. TruAge® was designed with that in mind from the beginning and we have always been privacy-forward. TruAge only uses four pieces of data to age-verify a consumer without revealing their personal details.

The way we think about it is simple: If a retailer only needs to know whether someone is of legal age, they shouldn't need access to every other piece of information contained in an ID. Our goal is to share only the information necessary for that specific transaction. The platform allows consumers to remain anonymous throughout the transaction while still providing retailers with the protections they need.

The future of technology is also that everything is moving toward your digital device. Your device isn’t necessarily always in your hand—it could be the dashboard of your car, which many think will be the future of ordering for pick up.

What are the biggest benefits a retailer can expect from using the resources available from We Card and TruAge?

Anderson: Improved overall compliance is the biggest potential benefit, although never a guarantee, of using We Card’s full array of resources and services alongside age-verification technology such as TruAge.

Together, We Card resources, including mystery shopping through the ID Check-Up service, training, compliance tools and age-verification technology such as TruAge, can help strengthen a retailer’s overall compliance program.

Sikorski: Not every retailer needs the same solution. Retailers should be able to choose the tools that work best for them while still benefiting from common standards and connectivity. That’s why we have designed products like TruAge to be compatible, not competitive. You could use all of our solutions individually or together, but the goal is that they integrate with your existing system. We are creating a technology standard so that these technologies can evolve in the future and evolve outside of the industry.

What feedback have you heard from retailers about the impact of We Card?

Anderson: Retail employees tell us they especially appreciate learning “What to Say” to customers when carding. They also value the role-playing scenarios and opportunities to practice age verification because those exercises help prepare them for real customer interactions.

In recent years, employees have increasingly asked for help de-escalating customer confrontations during carding, such as enforcing the FDA requirement that customers under age 30 present identification each time, even if the same sales associate carded them earlier in the day. We now offer a job aid on this topic.

What are TruAge’s biggest priorities over the next year?

Sikorski: A major priority is adoption. We're at a point where we can support a significant portion of the industry, and now it's about helping retailers onboard and benefit from these capabilities. The faster retailers can take advantage of modern software and connected technologies, the more value they'll be able to realize and that will be a huge win for everyone.

Our goal is to try to make it as frictionless as possible, and we are working with both the industry-known POS vendors as well as cloud-enabled POS environments to create that.

We're also focused on extending compatibility. That includes things like mobile driver's licenses, digital wallets, passports and other trusted credentials. We want to meet consumers wherever they already are, rather than requiring them to adopt an entirely new flow.