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, which also protects the user’s privacy. Since 2021,the product has grown, receiving support from 120 retailers, 11 POS vendors and counting,...
By Maggie Paulk
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Solving the Age-Verification Puzzle: 4 Ways to Ensure Compliance
Keeping up with changing requirements for proper age verification can be a challenge for retailers. It is difficult to keep regulators, customers and even your employees satisfied. How do you balance between having a strict 100% ID check policy, trusting your employees to make good judgements, and keeping your regular customers happy? Here are 4 ways your business can solve the age-verification puzzle.
1. Stop Sales to Minors
Prevent minors from accessing age-restricted items. There are laws in place that prevent the sale of certain items like lottery tickets, alcohol, tobacco, etc.–these could vary by state. Items like this are age restricted because certain things, like alcohol, can have negative impacts on minors.
2. Protect your Business
Ensure you are protecting your business and properly checking IDs during age-restricted transactions. Because there are laws in place to regulate age verification, it is important for your business to be thorough when checking an ID for an age-restricted sale. It is also important to keep a detailed log of each time you deny a transaction in case you ever need to provide the documentation to a regulator. By staying in compliance, you get to keep your business running smoothly and continue to responsibly handle age-restricted sales.
3. Employee Education
By keeping your employees educated on age verification and how to best handle age-restricted transactions, you will not only ensure that your business is handling age-restricted transactions by the book, but also teach your employees facts about age verification that they might not know. Teach your staff these 5 age-verification sales tips to keep your team on track.
4. Know the Law
Although it may be difficult to keep up with age verification in your business, compliance laws aim to ensure that businesses follow the proper ID procedure for age-restricted transactions and avoid any consequences of selling to minors. A general rule of thumb for verifying someone’s age is to ask for ID when someone looks to be under the age of 30 or 35. If there is any uncertainty, you should always ask for an ID to verify their age. If you have regulars who you see often and you have verified their ID multiple times, then you do not need to ask them for an ID every time they come in. These laws do vary from state to state, so be sure to check your local laws to ensure that your business is following the correct guidelines. By staying in compliance, you keep your business running smoothly and continue to responsibly handle age-restricted sales, which account for a generous portion of c-store sales.
Age-verification software, like TruAge™, makes age-restricted transactions a bit easier on your business. goEBT® is a brand of CDE Services, Inc. CDE recently announced that it will be deploying TruAge soon to its current and future customers. Learn more in goEBT's age-verification blog about TruAge.
Read More about CDE Services Inc. deploying TruAge here
