What is an Age Gating and how is it different from Age Verification? If you're selling age restricted goods online like alcohol, tobacco, cannabis or firearms, you absolutely need to know the difference.
Age gating is gating or blocking access to a website until the visitor enters in their birth date.
These are all over the web, and have been the primary method of complying with age restrictions on selling adult goods online since the beginning of the internet.
However, there is no true verification of the visitor's age. Websites using Age Gates are just simple date of birth forms. There is no fact checking against the date given by the visitor, their word is taken as fact.
Because these age gates are so widely abused by minors to purchase items online they're not eligble for, governments and legal entities are clamping down on this practice.
Instead Age Verification is becoming the new standard for compliance.
Age Verification is accepting proof from the customer and actually verifying it's autenticity. For example, accepting the customer's valid Driver's License or Passport as a form of identification and reading the Date of Birth field, just as you would in a brick & mortar store. By the way, identity verification is what we do. Age Verification goes a step beyond what Age Gating provides.
Age Gating is quickly becoming obsolete. It's at best a hinderance to your qualified customers and at worst it's a way for your unqualified customers to lie to you and put your business at unncessary risk.
Age Verification is the future of eCommerce, being pushed by regulation and merchants preventing further civil lawsuits for negligence.