The Future of Age Verification - How Mobile Driver's Licenses are Revolutionizing Alcohol Sales
Age verification is a critical component of responsible alcohol sales, ensuring compliance with legal drinking age requirements, preventing unauthorized purchases, and protecting liquor licenses. Traditionally, this has relied on the manual inspection of physical IDs, a process fraught with challenges like human error in detecting fraudulent documents. However, the advent of Mobile Driver's Licenses (mDLs) is poised to transform this landscape, offering a secure, portable, and private digital solution.
Published by the Identity & Access Forum, a body dedicated to advancing secure identity technologies, this brief highlights the significant potential of mDLs in various age verification scenarios for alcohol purchases.
What is a Mobile Driver's License (mDL)?
An mDL is a secure, digital version of a driver's license or ID, stored on a smartphone or other device. Unlike simply displaying an image of an ID on a phone, mDLs use cryptographic signatures to ensure the data is accurate, unaltered, and issued by a legitimate government agency. This cryptographic signature verifies the authenticity and tamper-resistance of the presented attributes against the issuing authority's public key.
Key Use Cases in Alcohol Sales
The sources identify several critical use cases where mDLs can streamline age verification:
• In-Person Liquor Purchase at Licensed Establishments: An attendant can verify a customer's age at a staffed counter or bar top. This process involves the customer presenting their mDL via their wallet app, which is then scanned by an mDL Reader. The reader displays verified data and the portrait for visual comparison by the attendant.
• Self-Service at Unattended Kiosks or Self-Checkout: Customers can verify their age independently at self-checkout stations or dedicated liquor vending machines. This often requires the mDL reader to incorporate a camera and facial biometric software to compare a live picture of the customer with the verified portrait from their mDL, ensuring the presenter is the rightful ID holder.
• Online Purchase with Delivery: This involves age verification at the point of online purchase (via website or app) and a repeat verification upon delivery by the delivery employee. The mDL can transmit necessary age attributes securely at checkout, and upon delivery, the recipient presents their mDL for verification, often involving a portrait match by the delivery personnel.
The Value Proposition: Why mDLs Matter
Adopting mDLs for age verification offers a compelling range of benefits for liquor retailers, online vendors, and delivery services, as well as for customers:
• Enhanced Convenience: Customers are already accustomed to digital transactions, and mDLs offer a seamless, contactless experience. This streamlines ID checks in-store, online, and during delivery, reducing hassle for consumers. Tap or scan interactions, like QR code scanning and NFC, have seen significant adoption and continue to be popular.
• Robust Fraud Prevention: mDLs significantly reduce the risk of accepting fake or expired IDs because they allow for cryptographic verification. This ensures the data is untampered, issued by a trusted authority, and legitimate, bypassing the visual inspection prone to human error.
• Improved Audit and Compliance: mDLs strengthen regulatory compliance by providing a reliable audit trail of verification. They align with evolving digital identity standards, helping businesses meet state and local laws for age verification and record-keeping, thereby minimizing liability risks.
• Cost Reduction: Businesses can see reduced labor costs due to faster checkouts, as mDLs can be scanned quickly, lessening the need for manual ID inspection and data entry at self-checkout. Furthermore, more accurate authentication leads to lower fraud-related losses by reducing underage sales and associated fines or license suspensions.
• Revenue Expansion: mDLs can enable new service channels, such as online liquor sales and automated age verification, which might not have been feasible with traditional methods, thus creating new revenue opportunities.
• Positive Customer Perception and Satisfaction: Embracing mDLs positions businesses as technology-forward and customer-centric. The speed, convenience, and privacy-preserving nature (only necessary data is shared) of mDL checks enhance the overall customer experience, building trust.
The Technology Behind It: Readers and Standards
To facilitate mDL verification, mDL Reader technology is essential. This technology can be implemented using existing hardware (e.g., QR code scanners, NFC, Bluetooth) or integrated into POS/Kiosk systems, or standalone readers. It's crucial that images of IDs on a customer's phone screen are not trusted; instead, actual mDL scanning and verification are required.
The verification process relies on international standards like ISO/IEC 18013-5:2021 (for nearby, offline interactions) and ISO/IEC 18013-7:2024 (for remote, online interactions). While ISO/IEC 18013-5 interactions typically don't require internet connectivity for the mDL holder or reader device, ISO/IEC 18013-7 generally requires both to be connected to internet services.
A critical security measure involves the distribution of public keys. Relying Parties must have access to a trusted list of public keys from issuing authorities (e.g., state agencies) to verify the authenticity of an mDL. Services like the AAMVA Digital Trust Service (DTS) and VISA Issuing Authority Authenticator (VIAA) facilitate this secure distribution, helping to prevent the acceptance of fraudulent mDLs.
Data Minimization and Privacy Considerations
A significant advantage of mDLs is their adherence to data minimization principles. Businesses can request only the data necessary for the transaction, such as "Age in Years" or "Age Over NN" (e.g., "Over 21"), without exposing sensitive personal details like the exact date of birth or home address.
Furthermore, consent is paramount. When data is obtained, the reader device should indicate an "Intent to Retain" for any data it plans to store. Unless legally required, businesses are advised not to retain customer data, as data breaches can be costly and damage reputation. For instance, portrait or biometric data used for verification during a transaction should be deleted once the order is complete.
Preparing for the Future: Challenges and Outlook
While the benefits are clear, some challenges remain:
• Availability of mDLs: Not all U.S. states and territories currently issue ISO/IEC 18013-5 compliant mDLs, though many are in development. Projections suggest 100 million mDLs will be in circulation across over half of US states by 2026.
• Holder Adoption and Setup: Adoption rates are growing as mDLs gain acceptance in various sectors, including TSA checkpoints, retail, and banking.
• Hardware and Integration: While some custom hardware exists, verification can often be done with standard phones or tablets using verification apps or SDKs. Integration with existing Point of Sale (POS) and establishment systems is beneficial for efficiency and audit purposes, and efforts are underway to promote this.
• Legal Acceptance: The acceptance and use of mDLs for age verification typically require pre-approval from state and local liquor boards, although several jurisdictions have already affirmed their legal use.
As mDLs become more widely adopted and remote presentation standards finalize, businesses selling alcohol will be better positioned to offer enhanced remote and self-service options while maintaining regulatory compliance with minimal manual effort. Metrics of success will include increased mDL transaction volumes, reduced error and fraud rates, faster processing times, improved customer satisfaction, and the ability to offer new service channels.
The shift to mDLs is not just about technology; it's about smarter, safer, and more customer-friendly age verification that benefits everyone involved in the alcohol sales ecosystem.
Kevin Karpelenia is a Senior Product Manager at ONEPROOF. Kevin is a seasoned Sales IT Product Manager for more than 23 Years and have recently worked at American Family Insurance in Madison, Wisconsin, where he combines technical expertise with strategic vision to drive impactful solutions for sales operations.
With a broad professional network and deep industry insight, Kevin excels at aligning technology and organizational needs to deliver value in the insurance sector.