Building trust: Why age verification is essential for online marketplaces

The ecommerce landscape is evolving rapidly, with global retail e-commerce sales projected to exceed $4.1 trillion in 2024. However, this growth has also attracted fraudsters, making robust security measures, like age verification, more critical than ever. According to Veriff’s Future of E-commerce Report, fraud in ecommerce is on the rise, with a 21% increase in fraudulent activities between 2024 and 2025. Alarmingly, 1 in 20 verification attempts in 2024 involved someone pretending to be someone else.

Online marketplaces connect millions of users to a vast array of products and services. With this great opportunity comes a great responsibility: ensuring that age-restricted goods are only sold to appropriate customers.

Failing to verify a user’s age can lead to significant legal penalties, reputational damage, and a loss of consumer confidence. For marketplaces that facilitate the sale of items like alcohol, tobacco products, or certain weapons, the stakes are even higher. Integrating a seamless and automated age verification solution protects your business, safeguards minors, and enhances the overall customer experience.

The high stakes of non-compliance

Online marketplaces operate within a complex web of international and local regulations. Laws like the UK’s Licensing Act and Offensive Weapons Act, the EU’s Digital Services Act, and various state-level regulations in the USA impose strict requirements on businesses selling age-sensitive products. Non-compliance isn’t just a slap on the wrist; it can result in heavy fines and, in severe cases, the suspension of business licenses.

By proactively integrating age verification, you demonstrate a commitment to responsible business practices. This not only keeps you on the right side of the law but also builds a reputation as a platform that prioritizes user safety, which is a powerful differentiator in a crowded market.

The challenge: Age-gating in a digital world

Marketplaces face a unique set of pressures. You need to onboard users quickly to maintain growth, but you also have a duty of care to protect them. This becomes especially complex when dealing with age-sensitive products and interactions.

Selling age-restricted goods

Platforms that facilitate the sale of products like alcohol, tobacco, or gaming items must have ironclad age verification processes. Failure to comply can result in heavy fines, legal action, and reputational damage. The key is to verify age without making the checkout process frustrating for legitimate adult customers.

Protecting minors

For C2C and social marketplaces, the risk is different but just as critical. Preventing underage users from accessing mature content or interacting with potentially harmful individuals is a top priority. A platform known for being unsafe for younger audiences will quickly lose the trust of parents and users alike.

The friction problem

Many legacy age verification systems require users to stop what they’re doing, find their physical ID, and wait for a manual review. This interruption is a major point of user drop-off. In a competitive digital landscape, a clunky user experiment.

How Veriff delivers seamless Age Verification

Modern customers expect a fast, frictionless checkout experience. Any disruption can lead to cart abandonment. This is why a cumbersome age verification process is not an option. Veriff’s solution is designed to integrate seamlessly into your existing user journey, making age checks quick, accurate, and unobtrusive.

Our AI-powered technology works in the background, minimizing friction and keeping the user experience smooth. By using state-of-the-art systems, we can accurately verify a user’s age in seconds, ensuring that legitimate, age-appropriate customers can complete their purchases without unnecessary delays.

Even the most accurate age estimation system must verify that it’s analyzing a real, live person. Without liveness detection, systems are vulnerable to two major attack types:

• Presentation Attacks: When users attempt to pass verification with static photos, videos, or masks.
• Injection Attacks: When pre-recorded or digitally fabricated imagery is fed directly into the system.

Veriff combats these threats through integrated passive liveness detection, which operates invisibly to the user while confirming physical presence. This prevents spoofing with photos, deepfakes, or synthetic identities, ensuring every estimation is authentic, secure, and fraud-resistant.

By merging Age Estimation with liveness detection, Veriff delivers a seamless, low-friction, and tamper-proof verification process—ideal for protecting minors and maintaining regulatory complianc

Advanced solutions for modern marketplaces

Veriff offers a suite of products designed to meet the diverse needs of online platforms:

• Age Estimation: This privacy-preserving method uses advanced facial analysis from a simple selfie to estimate a user’s age. It’s a quick, document-free way to ensure users meet a minimum age threshold without collecting sensitive personal data.
• Age Validation: For a more definitive check, our system can extract the date of birth from thousands of government-issued IDs from around the world and check against the threshold set. It automatically calculates the user’s age and can decline anyone who falls below your predefined minimum age requirement.

Stay compliant with Age‑Verification in the EU & UK/IE

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Beyond compliance: The broader benefits of Age Verification

Implementing a robust age verification system offers advantages that extend far beyond simply meeting legal requirements.

Enhancing user trust and brand integrity

When users see that you are taking steps to protect minors and ensure a safe environment, their trust in your platform grows. This commitment to safety can foster customer loyalty and enhance your brand’s reputation as a responsible and ethical marketplace.

Fraud prevention and age verification

Age verification is a key compliance and access-control measure — and when combined with identity verification (IDV), it becomes a powerful layer in fraud prevention. Together, they not only confirm that users meet age requirements but also add extra assurance and advanced fraud detection capabilities, helping you confidently grant access to age-restricted goods and services.

For organizations that also perform identity verification (IDV), Veriff’s technology extends these protections further. By combining IDV with fraud prevention capabilities such as liveness detection, device and network analytics, and face blocklisting, you can ensure the person behind the verification is genuine. This comprehensive approach helps reduce the risk of identity theft, account misuse, and unauthorized transactions — offering a true fraud prevention layer built on verified identity.

Global reach and inclusivity

The internet has no borders, and your marketplace may serve customers from all over the world. Veriff supports over 12,000 government-issued documents and processes 48 languages and dialects. This global reach allows you to onboard and verify users from around the world, providing an inclusive experience for your international customer base.

Secure your marketplace with Veriff

In the competitive world of e-commerce, trust is your most valuable asset. Integrating a reliable and user-friendly age verification solution is a critical step in building and maintaining that trust. It demonstrates your commitment to safety, protects your business from legal risks, and provides a secure environment for all your users.

Veriff provides the advanced tools you need to comply with regulations, prevent fraud, and offer a seamless experience for your age-appropriate customers. By automating age checks, you can safeguard your platform, protect minors, and solidify your reputation as a leading online marketplace.