Introducing Age Estimation from Veriff

From dating to gaming, online services have revolutionized customers’ lives through qualities like speed, reliability, and usability. However, unfortunate consequences can occur if online services are utilized inappropriately, such as underage gaming, access to explicit content, and illegal sales of goods like alcohol and tobacco. It’s not only customers that face harm; businesses that are not safeguarding underage customers fail compliance, potentially resulting in significant legal, financial, and reputational penalties.

Apart from online services, businesses such as supermarkets, vending machine operators, and shared mobility platforms will want to ensure that their customers are age-appropriate before they can purchase age-restricted products or access venues. Thanks to recent innovations in age estimation technology, businesses can better ensure that their customers are age-appropriate, helping to create safer conditions for everyone.

How Age Estimation works

At Veriff, we understand that businesses want to verify a customer’s age while providing an optimized customer experience. Veriff’s Age Estimation solution uses facial biometric analysis and advanced AI algorithms to estimate a customer’s age without requiring the customer to provide an identity document or credit card.

Veriff’s Age Estimation solution is a low friction and high conversion option for cases where an identity document-based age check is not appropriate. A customer simply has to provide a selfie and the business will receive an estimated age in seconds - they can then make a decision on whether to grant that customer access to services or age-gated goods.

Why Age Estimation can benefit you

The main benefit of Age Estimation is that it enables people who don't have an approved identity document to confirm their age online. Perhaps the best illustration of this is with children who don't yet have a government identity document or in situations where the customer just does not possess an ID card.

These people would previously have been excluded from accessing services but can now be confirmed through Age Estimation - making your services more inclusive, decreasing customer frustration, cutting drop-offs, and increasing overall conversion rates.

Age Estimation offers other benefits to businesses. For instance, customers are increasingly concerned about sharing their information online, with questions around how it’s stored and who has access to it. With Age Estimation, businesses can enable customers to confirm their age without having to share their identity documents, respecting customer privacy. Veriff enables businesses to engage with customers around the world, with support for 48 languages and dialects and is available via API, Web, and SDK.

Blocking bad actors with Age Estimation

Businesses will be able to mitigate fraud through a combination of liveness detection, face blocklisting, device fingerprinting, and dynamic fraud checks. This will prevent fraudsters from gaining access to services without affecting the experience of genuine customers. Additionally, in a digital world where young customers can be improperly targeted, instead businesses will be able to publicly demonstrate their commitment to ensuring their customer base is age-appropriate and legally compliant.

“Age estimation solutions are still relatively new in the market compared to age verification solutions that are based on the date of birth extracted from a government issued identity document,” said Janer Gorohhov, co-founder and CPO of Veriff. “It’s critical that we offer these estimation services to our customers as an alternative way to verify age, especially for sectors that require age checks such as video gaming, retail, and online dating where the user base often does not have a valid proof of ID and conversion is a key business driver. Veriff’s new Age Estimation solution is key to minimizing friction in the age verification process and increasing conversion rates, enabling our customers to grow their businesses quickly and sustainably.”