Age ID Verification in Retail Just Got Faster, Easier and More Compliant

As long as there have been age restrictions on the sales of some types of products, there has been a need for consumer ID checks. The penalties businesses face for not checking customer IDs can be crippling for any retailer.

In this guide, we examine how high performance ID verification can ensure retailers stay on the right side of the law. You’ll discover:

• What ID verification is and how it ensures compliance
• Why ID verification is essential in retail
• Why smart devices are ideal for checking IDs
• Why ID verification is easy to deploy with Scandit

ID verification is the extraction of data from documents into a digital format that can be tracked, validated, or queried. It provides an audit trail of what is being verified and the reasons why. For example, retailers or grocers selling age-restricted products like alcohol, tobacco, knives or fireworks need to be able to validate a person’s age.

Smart data capture and ID scanning software give any retailer needing to check a person’s identity, instant access to an easy-to-use mobile ID scanning tool. This helps to reduce delays or dwell time and eliminates human errors when checking a person’s identity.

To be truly effective, ID scanning software needs to be able to capture and verify data from a wide range of ID documents, including:

Passports, ID Cards, and Visas with Machine Readable Zones (MRZ)

Machine Readable Travel Documents (MRTD), including ID cards, visa stickers, and all passports. These documents are standardized by the ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization).

Drivers’ Licenses and ID Cards with PDF417 Barcodes

PDF417 barcodes are used on all drivers’ licenses in Canada and the USA, along with US Military IDs. Many countries also use PDF417 barcodes for citizen ID cards.

ID Cards and Drivers Licenses without Machine Readable Data

Data from the front of drivers’ licenses in the EU, UK and US (and other drivers licenses and ID cards) is captured using OCR to scan the visual inspection zone.

Retailers must verify customer age to comply with legal requirements and prevent underage sales.

Point of sale, click & collect, curbside pick up, and home deliveries are just some of the retail workflows requiring age verification when orders include age-restricted products.

This need intensifies when you consider the sharp rise in recent years of online shopping, which often includes age-restricted items.

Likewise, the trend of flexible grocery fulfillment services such as those provided by Instacart and Shipt has accelerated too. The need for fast yet robust age-related ID verification has never been more imperative.

Yet ensuring reliable compliance checks has been a challenge for many retailers. Manual processes, with their risk of errors, oversights, and lack of an auditable trail of checks, run the risk of costly fines and damage to a retailer’s reputation.

Over the last few years, many countries, including the US, have cracked down on regular non-compliance in a bid to control the sale of age-restricted goods and their impact on societal issues such as underage drinking.

This places even greater pressure on retailers to have robust, auditable processes in place to ensure regulatory compliance.

Identity verification software that integrates high-performance ID scanning into mobile and web-based apps, accurately and securely captures and parses identity data. This maintains an auditable record.

See how fast and accurate ID scanning can be carried out anywhere and anyplace:

Using smart data capture to authorize a customer’s ID at the POS, pick up or during doorstep delivery, offers a host of benefits:

• Flexibility: a single device can be used for ID scanning as well as other retail tasks
• Empowering: using smart data capture means no need for shared bulky scanners.
• Speed: there’s no need for manual data inputting.
• Secure: all data is processed directly on the device, keeping customers’ Personal Identifiable Information (PII) secure. Personal data is not stored on the device.
• Accuracy: it removes human error when verifying ages with 95%-99.5% scan accuracy.
• Reliability: retailers can rely on accurate information and data records.

ID verification is already working well for Instacart, giving them regulatory compliance with Scandit’s ID Scanning SDK.

With the anticipated rise in shopping services – click & collect, home delivery, curbside pickups and others, retailers are turning to enterprise ID scanning software to ensure the fulfillment of age-restricted goods is done compliantly and efficiently.

ID Scanning from Scandit is easy to integrate seamlessly into your retail workflows, through your existing app or website and can be deployed in as little as four weeks.

It can be added to native smartphone apps, as well as android-based hardware scanners, with the Scandit Smart Data Capture SDK that includes ID scanning.

ID scanning can also be added quickly to website or web-based apps with just a few lines of code with ID Scanning SDK for the Web. Both enable you to:

• Scan and parse Machine Readable Zones (MRZ) from different ID documents.
• Directly scan and parse the text containing the personal data located on the front of a driver’s license or ID card.
• Scan and parse PDF417 barcodes on the back of ID documents such as US and Canadian drivers’ licenses.

Security and data privacy is assured – all data extraction and processing is done entirely on the device with full compliance with applicable data protection laws, including but not limited to GDPR and CCPA.

Be compliant, delight customers and stay ahead

When you bring reliable and accurate ID scanning into a retail app or web app, it gives retailers real-time access and control over compliance data as it comes in. It also captures an auditable trail of verification data to ensure all sales and deliveries of age-restricted goods are compliant with country-specific regulations. Fast and efficient service is always good for customer satisfaction too.