Carding Better

Age verification goes digital and gets more discreet.

Carding Better

October 2024   minute read

By: Joe Beeton

The convenience industry processes more than 54 million in-store transactions every day, 40% of which include age-restricted products. Overall, 80% of consumers who buy age-restricted products buy them at c-stores.

For the most part, these millions of transactions still hinge on scanning physical IDs and driver’s licenses, which is better than manual review but still raises numerous challenges. The old-school process slows down the speed of transactions, divulges sensitive personal data and exposes operators to the risk of errors and violations.

Maybe more importantly, carding creates friction for a meaningful number of your most important customers. According to research from TruAge Solutions, 9% of respondents in a survey don’t like being carded and 3% say they “hate it.”

Among the 12% of people who don’t like or hate being carded, the reasons include:

  • It’s inconvenient: 55%
  • It takes too much time: 41%
  • I don’t always have my ID on me: 39%
  • I don’t think it’s necessary: 25%
  • I feel uncomfortable sharing my personal information with a stranger: 15%
  • It’s offensive: 9%

Retailers may be able to solve these challenges in a way that also creates a better experience for customers who don’t mind being carded.

“With the volume of age-restricted transactions at convenience stores, changing consumer behaviors and new technologies, we wanted to simplify and safeguard the carding process for consumers and retailers alike,” said Stephanie Sikorski, vice president of marketing at NACS.

“Fewer people are carrying a wallet; they want everything in one spot, typically on their phone.”

The industry needs to consider a whole generation of people who have grown up with technology, Sikorski continued. They don’t carry around paper boarding passes, for example, and have increasingly started using digital payment systems or stored credit card information in smartphone wallets. “Fewer people are carrying a wallet; they want everything in one spot, typically on their phone,” explained Lisa Rountree, head of marketing and customer experience for TruAge Solutions, a not-for-profit digital age-verification system. “Rather than fumble through their wallet to pull out a physical ID card at the register, tests have proven that pulling out a phone provides a faster, more secure and more convenient method for consumers’ lifestyles.”

Beyond convenience, consumers seek greater protection of their sensitive data. “Privacy concerns have started to really ramp up,” Rountree said. “A retailer needs to know you are old enough to buy an age-restricted product, but the store doesn’t need to know your name and your address.”

Protecting the Store

Not having insight into what is happening at the register—i.e., whether cashiers are doing what they need to do—can leave operators defenseless, said Brittany Wilchar, director of human resources for Lassus Brothers, which has activated TruAge at dozens of locations in the Midwest. “For a long time, we didn’t have any reporting available to us to tell us how often our team members were scanning IDs—only that they were entering a date that was acceptable.”

Digital age verification is “one more tool” that ensures employees—and thus, store operators—are in compliance and can protect themselves, said Wilchar. “There is a little bit more ease knowing that we have a second line of defense. Plus, the reporting capabilities we get on the back end allow us to provide better training to team members.” Retailers that install TruAge, for example, can see carding rates by store per day.

And error or lack of oversight can be costly. “Manufacturers are starting to see products get banned or restricted because they were perceived as being sold irresponsibly,” explained Rountree. “That not only impacts suppliers but also greatly affects stores’ revenue.”

Plus, fines and sale restrictions can be “absolutely detrimental,” especially for small businesses and independent operators, Rountree said. “Nobody wants to see their employee get arrested for making an innocent mistake.”

The TruAge scan also provides the retailer with admissible proof entered directly into its transaction log that age was verified at purchase using a valid ID. If law enforcement did need to get involved for any reason, then the additional information associated with the person’s identification could be unlocked with a subpoena and retailers would be able to prove they did the right thing.

Another benefit of TruAge is that it makes life easier for the cashier. “Frontline workers have so much on their plate and carding is stressful. How can they know the ID for every state, how to check for fakes, remember both state and federal volume limitations, and whether certain products require mandatory ID checks while others don’t. The problem only gets worse when you consider the employee turnover in the industry,” Rountree said.

“Anecdotally, cashiers love being able to use TruAge. Asking for ID is awkward for some frontline workers. With a digital system—even if carding isn’t mandatory—the cashier doesn’t appear to be the one making the decisions. It just makes carding easier and causes less friction for the employee,” she shared.

Helping the Industry

“As an industry, we are innovating around age verification and creating even better safeguards.”

TruAge is entirely free to retailers. “There are for-profit companies that offer age verification out there advocating for mandatory carding. In that scenario, the convenience store industry would be on the hook for potentially billions of dollars each year, having to pay a little bit each time they verified age at checkout. Retailers don’t need another swipe fee situation,” Sikorski said.

And the breadth of age-restricted items sold in c-stores could expand in the future. “It’s possible that as time goes by, more and more items that are age-restricted will be available in c-stores. It’s not far-fetched that in many states, eventually some form of cannabis may be for sale. Having a foolproof system that preserves privacy and manages volume limitations is paramount for this sort of development,” Sikorski said. “As an industry, we are innovating around age verification and creating even better safeguards.”

Delivery and pick-up is yet another consideration, according to Sikorski. “Right now, you’ve got delivery drivers taking snapshots of peoples’ licenses. There has to be a better way.”

How TruAge Works

TruAge works with both traditional driver’s licenses as well as the TruAge app. In either case, TruAge anonymizes a user’s data into a persona. The TruAge app takes it a step further by creating single-use tokens that convey the necessary information a retailer needs. Those are then scanned when purchasing an age-restricted product. It doesn’t associate the scannable token with the customer’s name or identity. When retailers scan the code on someone’s phone, the POS (and several major POS providers, including Verifone and Clover, are already TruAge-ready) logs one of two responses: either the person is of age or they are not. Also captured in the scan is whether the person’s associated government-issued identification card is valid. TruAge also triggers a response to volume limitations if applicable to the products being scanned in that transaction.

With a digital age-verification system like TruAge, the transaction moves faster, and a customer proves they can legally purchase the product without exposing any other information about themselves.

The technology is based on the “Verifiable Credential” standard used by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which was a partner in the development of TruAge. As modern life increasingly goes digital, DHS has been faced with implementing systems that can work in parallel to physical identification cards.

“As a government entity that values the privacy and agency of our citizens and our customers, it’s important to us that—similar to a physical credential—a [digital] credential does not reveal to the issuer of that credential where it’s used, because then that issuer cannot, in any way, shape or form, track the usage of that credential across space and time,” explained Anil John, Technical Director of the DHS S&T Silicon Valley Innovation Program for DHS.

Joe Beeton

Joe Beeton

Joe Beeton is a contributing writer for NACS. His writing and editing career has focused on real estate and development with an emphasis on retail.

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