Age verification tech to be piloted in northwest England stores

"Regulatory Sandbox" trial run, under which technology will be used to help retailers check customers' ages to prevent alcohol being sold to anyone underage, will be piloted in several convenience stores in the northwest of England, stated recent reports.

The Home Office has invited organizations to propose digital methods of checking customers' ages while purchasing alcohol. The “regulatory Sandbox" trial will run between January and May 2022.

Innovative Technology Ltd., a provider of biometric solutions to estimate age, is set to participate in a government program piloting age verification technology for the retail sale of alcohol.

Co-op, Tesco, Asda, Aldi and Morrisons are participating in the “regulatory sandbox” between January and May 2022, testing the technology’s ability to facilitate alcohol sales safely and swiftly.

"ICU age verification technology will now be piloted in several convenience stores in the northwest of England, and we will closely monitor our test sites to ensure we support the retailers' and collate the relevant data throughout the trial," Andrew O'Brien, ICU product manager, said.

"ICU performs anonymous age estimation completely offline, so no images or data are stored, maintaining privacy, O'Brien said. The accuracy of the solution has been independently tested by the Age Check Certification Service which found that it underestimates age by only 0.19 years, which establishes ICU as the most accurate independently tested system worldwide.

"Facial analysis software essentially uses different features of a customer's face to evaluate and establish their age," said Tony Allen, founder and chief executive of the ACCS.

Another participant in the trial run is Yoti, a digital identity platform used by the NHS, which claims to have developed the world’s most accurate age estimation technology, training its AI-powered algorithm to check the age of faces with an average accuracy of 2.2 years, rising to one-and-a-half years among those aged between 16 and 20.

The technology, which is distinct from facial recognition, will be built into supermarket self-service terminals, taking photos of consenting customers’ faces for analysis and deleting them once the process is completed.

Yoti claims the only data shared with the retailer is the age check and that a human will never see the picture.

The Home Office had launched the pilot scheme in March 2021, inviting tech providers, retailers, bars and restaurants to propose digital methods of checking customers’ ages with a view to starting trials last summer. However, the public experiments were pushed back into the new year.