What is Age Verification?
Age verification is the process by which a business establishes and verifies the age of an individual.
In many instances, knowing the age of a customer can be crucial information for a business.
The most common application of age verification is during the standard Know Your Customer (KYC) process that occurs when a business or financial institution verifies the identity of a new client during the customer onboarding process.
While age verification is a legal obligation for certain businesses, it is also voluntarily used as a tool for risk assessment and risk mitigation.
Age Verification as a KYC Check
Know Your Customer (KYC) is a term that refers to procedures and mechanisms that are used to verify the identity of customers before conducting business with them.
When conducting KYC checks, a business will typically be verifying:
- That an individual exists
- Whether that individual is exactly who they claim to be
- Whether that individual is eligible to receive the product or service in question
- Whether that individual poses a threat of money laundering or other such crime
Age verification often forms part of the selection of KYC checks that businesses run on their customers – examples include a bank requiring proof of residence before they can approve a client’s loan request.
Age verification, therefore, forms a crucial part of helping a business to verify that an individual is who they claim to be and that all the information associated with them is correct.
Online Age Verification
Today, online age verification services have transformed identity verification and data validation.
Online solutions for age verification enable highly efficient, accurate and cost-effective means for age verification and other KYC checks that leverage powerful technologies like biometric information and artificial intelligence to deliver incredibly accurate and reliable identity verification.
Online identity verification allows for the verification of remote individuals – clients and individuals on the other side of the world can easily verify themselves, while businesses have the capacity to efficiently verify new clients, customers and employees in a seamless remote-onboarding process.
Furthermore, the personal information necessary for the verification of an individual’s identity can be pulled from a variety of trusted and secure sources, thereby increasing the reliability of the verification.
Who Needs to Conduct Age Verification Checks?
Many financial institutions are legally obligated to verify the age of their clients before doing business with them. In South Africa, businesses designated as Accountable Institutions (AIs) must comply with a range of regulatory compliance obligations designed to promote good financial practice and mitigate against the risk of financial crime – the verification of client age is one such regulatory obligation and falls within the general sphere of KYC obligations.
Some businesses verify the age of their customers due to the age-restricted nature of their products or services – sports betting companies are legally required to verify that their customers are above the legal age limit before they are allowed to grant the customer access to the service.
Other businesses verify the age of their clients as a form of risk management. For example, a car rental company may wish to verify the age of potential clients in order to account for the variance in risk presented by different age groups.
Why is Age Verification Important?
Age verification is an important tool for risk assessment and risk mitigation. By verifying the age of a customer, a business can generate a more comprehensive risk profile of that customer, thereby empowering the business to better mitigate that risk. For example, car rental companies use age verification to assess the risk profile of their customers – young males will be charged significantly higher rental rates because their gender-specific age bracket poses a high risk to the car rental company.
In these instances, age verification is important because customers can seldom be expected to be honest, especially not when honesty means that they will be obliged to pay more for a service. Therefore, if a business wishes to accurately assess and mitigate risk, the business must take steps to reliably verify the age of the customer.
Age Verification API
Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) can be understood as mechanisms that enable two or more software components to communicate with each other using established protocols and definitions.
In the context of identity verification and data validation – such as the age verification process – an API enables a business to build the necessary software into the relevant customer and employee onboarding processes, thereby ensuring a seamless and efficient verification process.
APIs are a perfect tool for those businesses and institutions that demand the capacity to process vast amounts of address verification requests simultaneously and quickly. APIs enable these businesses to streamline their address verification requirements by building them into an automated process that can automatically conduct the necessary checks, completing the entire process in an automated and digital manner.
By automating intensive administrative tasks, the automation of KYC checks frees up valuable human resources and enables their energy to be better spent elsewhere in the business. The automation of identity verification tasks, therefore, not only saves time and money by creating efficient digital processes, but also creates value by freeing up invaluable human capital within the organization.
ThisIsMe’s advanced API offerings give businesses the tools they need to seamlessly integrate advanced identity verification and information validation tools, while still maintaining the highest standards for customer experience.
For businesses, institutions and organizations that process smaller amounts of requests and do not require the integration of an API to meet their demands, ThisIsMe’s Partners Platform provides access to our solutions on a subscription or pay-as-you-go basis. This ensures that our suite of world-class solutions remains accessible to clients of all sizes and at all price points.
Online Age and Identity Verification Services South Africa
As South Africa’s leading provider of world-class due diligence and remote-onboarding solutions, ThisIsMe is proud to be at the forefront of a trust-based and privacy-compliant digital world. We offer a wide range of FICA-compliant KYC services that encompass age verification checks, politically exposed person checks, account verification services, and company sanction and credit checks.
To experience our full suite of due diligence solutions and see how we can help your business verify client information and meet its AML/CFT regulatory obligations, book a demonstration by contacting our team here.
