Globalisation and ID Verification

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Free-Press-Release.com) September 16, 2009 -- On October 16th 2009 the second reading of the proposed "Online Purchasing of Goods and Services (Age Verification) Bill" has its second reading in the House of Commons. Baroness Massey (Lab) has championed the push for this new Bill to protect children from gaining access to age-restricted goods. The Age Verification Bill is calling for online retaliers who sell age-restricted goods to implement a system that enables them to verify the age of the customer purchasing their products inline with legal minimum age requirements.

The Age Verification Bill will remove any ambiguity and place the legal burden upon retailers to confirm their customers age before age-restricted goods are sold. The implications for online suppliers are far reaching, from a budgetary and operational perspective they will have additional burden placed upon their resources. Retailers of the following products will be seriously affected by the proposed Bill: Alcohol, knives, tobacco, video games, DVDs, solvents and spray paints.

The precursor to the Age Verification Bill was the Gambling Act 2005, this new Act placed a legal requirement upon gambling operators to verify the age of their customers, no longer is the "tick box" confirmation approach enough to verify is their customer is over 18.

Diligent Compliance Director, William Brown commented:

"The Age Verification Bill has been backed by multiple members of the House of Lords and House of Commons alike, the proposed Bill is an emotive subject as its primary focus is to protect children from being emotionally or physically harmed. Online shopping has increased exponentially in recent years, opening up multiple markets for retailers. In real terms, e-based shopping is still in its infancy, thus providing retailers and law with new challenges to ensure customers of age-restricted goods are at least the minimum age required."

"At Diligent Compliance we understand the difficulties for retailers to verify the age of their online customers, especially with the diversity of their consumer nationalities across a broad demographic. Responsible retailers obviously would not intentionally sell their age-restricted goods to minors, we acknowledge the difficulties for retailers in finding technology with broad enough geographical coverage of official government IDs to confirm the age of their customers. The new proposed Bill could result in retailers of age-restricted goods losing business because of the restrictions on the age verification systems available."

At Diligent Compliance we are raising the bar with our global age verification systems, our Diligent age verification system covers over 150+ countries, and provides real time online access to official government ID sources. Diligent age verification is an easy to implement online technology, it provides access to bespoke threshold settings and an easy pass or fail rating as standard.

age verification     Age Verification Bill     Age-restricted goods