No excuse for underage sales online

This article is brought to you by Retail Technology Review: No excuse for underage sales online.

Online retailers no longer have an excuse for selling restricted goods and services to children as technology now exists that can check and verify the age of customers, according to John Lyons, Chief Security Officer of payment services provider SecureTrading.

Despite this, recent research from the Trading Standards Institute suggests that the vast majority of Internet merchants are failing to prevent sales of adult films, alcohol, fireworks, violent DVD games and knives to under 18s by not carrying out any meaningful age verification checks.

Retailers can now seize the initiative and adopt appropriate verification measures to ensure every person making an online purchase of goods and services is of the required age. Simply ticking a box is paying lip-service to the issue and relying on the customer holding a credit card is no longer a valid age verifier, says Lyons.

Previously, retailers could legitimately suggest that reliance on the person holding a valid credit card was proof enough that they were over 18. However, the recent launch by various financial services companies of pre-paid credit and debit cards to underage teens now requires the online industry to adopt a more effective solution.

Lyons explains: The technology now exists that will, amongst other search criteria, successfully check the age of a customer in almost every situation. Our identity and age verification solution allows merchants to cross reference buyer information using an array of databases to ensure customer information such as age, identity and address are correct.