What is age verification?
Age verification is the process of confirming that a user meets a minimum age threshold before granting them access to a product, service, or piece of content. It is increasingly required by law — for example, for online gambling platforms, adult content sites, alcohol or tobacco e-commerce, and certain financial products.
Following the transposition of the Fifth EU Anti-Money Laundering Directive (AMLD5) in January 2020 and the subsequent Sixth AMLD, the EU has now adopted a sweeping AML reform package that replaces the directive-based approach with a directly applicable EU Regulation (AMLR), coming into force in July 2027. For licensed gaming and gambling operators, the obligation remains unchanged: all players must be properly identified as part of a risk-based AML assessment to mitigate money laundering risk and protect minors.
But age verification isn't only in the gaming and gambling sectors. Verifying age is also becoming common in the mobility industry with regulations becoming more prominent especially within micromobility, specifically e-scooters.
Why is age verification important?
Age verification is important because it not only protects minors in gaming, gambling and mobility but it also protects companies from those who would commit fraud or bypass age guidelines. This in turn provides companies to comply with regulatory requirements and maintain user trust.
It ensures the safety of everyone involved especially in mobility making sure that all drivers, be it of cars or e-scooters, are of legal age to operate the vehicle of choice.
How does age verification work?
The highest-assurance approaches for age verification rely on document-based identity verification — ideally combined with a biometric liveness check — since they tie a confirmed date of birth to a government-issued ID and provide an auditable record. The user submits an ID (passport, national identity card, or driving licence), and the system extracts the date of birth from the document and compares it against the required age. This can happen automatically through AI-powered document analysis, or with an additional human review step for higher-assurance use cases.
How IDnow supports age verification
IDnow supports age verification through automated document checks and live video verification. With the Trust Platform, users submit an identity document; the system extracts the date of birth using OCR or, where supported, NFC, calculates the user’s age and compares it with the configured minimum-age threshold. For higher-assurance flows or cases requiring human review, VideoIdent connects the user with an identification specialist who checks the document, matches the user to the document holder and verifies the date of birth. Ready to add age checks to your user journey? Talk to our experts about age verification.