As a busy shop owner on Shopify, you want to make sure you’re using the best age verification app there is to keep your customers safe. But this can take time. 

When selling online, it can be hard to make sure you’re never selling age restricted items to underage customers.

If supermarkets were to sell alcohol or kitchen knives without asking for ID they’d be in a lot of trouble! Selling age-restricted goods online without proper age verification isn’t any different.

Want to ensure your customers are safe, staying compliant with laws and regulations, without affecting customer experience? Look no further.

Whose responsibility is it to check age?

There are no ‘ifs’ or ‘buts’ about it - it’s the responsibility of the retailer to ensure that they do not sell age restricted items online to people under the legal minimum age. The law clearly states that when a product is purchased, due diligence and reasonable precautions must be made at the point of sale.

Whilst there is no definitive answer to what ‘taking all reasonable precautions’ means, the best thing you can do as a retailer is follow Assured Advice. Assured Advice means that if you abide by this advice in your business, it’s a guaranteed stamp of approval from local authorities.

OneID is certified as Assured Advice, so you can rest easy knowing your business is doing the right thing by using it to verify age.

Does this apply to your online store?

If you sell any of the following products, they are age-restricted and require online age verification upon purchase:

• Alcohol
• Kitchenware including knives and sharp objects
• Cigarettes, e-cigarettes and vapes
• Tools and DIY items
• Pharmaceuticals
• Fireworks
• Video games
• Movies
• Aerosol paints

Why some online age verification methods won’t work

If your shop is on Shopify, you’ll have access to hundreds of age verification apps via the official app store. However, most of these are not compliant with new age verification regulations, and some will slow down your customer journeys, neither of which are ideal.

Methods that simply ask you to enter your DOB, age or confirm you are the right age to buy the product will not effectively age-gate against minors. Other methods relying on credit card verification are also risky as underage customers may have access to credit cards that are not their own.

But more reliable methods, such as uploading ID are long and tedious, potentially leading to cart abandonment.  

The Shopify age verification app that does it all

So, you want to keep your customer safe online, stay compliant with regulations and ensure customer experience isn’t affected – sounds simple enough right? Try OneID Age Verification.

Here’s what age verification with OneID looks like: 

It works like this: customers buying age-restricted items are asked to verify their age. They are taken to their banking app, share their verified age tag, and are done and ready to checkout in seconds!

Safeguard your customers while ensuring you’re not liable for selling age-restricted goods online illegally without faffing about with live selfies and document uploads.

Interested? Seamlessly integrate the OneID plugin on your Shopify platform today in just minutes. Try OneID for free today or book a demo if you want to find out more.