Fergal Parkinson
Published on: May 22, 2023
Younger gamblers in the UK could face a stake limit of £2 on online slot machines, under new government proposals to enforce age verification regulations. These measures aim to ensure underage users are effectively barred from accessing platforms that require age verification for online gaming.
The long-awaited whitepaper on gambling was published at the end of April and set out plans for how to reform the sector. The headline suggestion was to make it even harder for any under 18s to access any form of betting at all – and then to have a second-tier age group of young adults, aged 18-24, who will be allowed to place wagers but with more restrictions on stakes and losses than those over 24.
This move, if ratified, would bring the UK betting scene closer to the US, where the state-by-state, sport-by-sport system presents a complex scenario. In some states, you can gamble at 18, in others not until 21, while in some cases, gambling is prohibited altogether. These variations highlight the importance of robust age verification in gaming online to meet different regulatory demands.
The UK proposal would place a significant burden on gambling companies to ensure their systems are sufficiently robust to verify user ages and avoid fines. For example, William Hill was fined a record £19.2 million in March for breaches of customer protection rules. As regulations tighten, penalties for breaking them will surely increase.
This is just the latest in a series of developments globally driving the adoption of age verification. In Arkansas, USA, for instance, Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders pushed ahead with plans requiring state residents under 18 to have parental consent to hold accounts on certain social media platforms. Similarly, in the UK and France, authorities are working towards stricter online age verification standards.
We are accelerating towards a point where genuinely verifying a user’s age—beyond self-certifying by clicking “over 18″—is set to become the standard. These changes also highlight the growing complexity of implementing age verification in gaming services across different regions and age brackets.
So, how will age verification work? The first-tier protection likely to be implemented is facial inspection. While effective for basic checks, it has limitations in distinguishing age brackets like 12 vs. 13 years old.
The next step involves ID verification, such as scanning a passport or driving licence. While helpful, this approach is vulnerable to fraud, especially from older teens adept at faking IDs. Some platforms may explore parental certification as an added layer of age verification in gaming systems.
The most advanced and reliable method, however, is device-based verification. This is where TMT fits into the picture, offering solutions like our Authenticate system. By relying on live data from telecom providers, we can determine the user’s age with a very high degree of accuracy. This ensures robust age verification in gaming online environments while streamlining the user experience.
How this approach breaks into sub-categories such as ‘under 13’, ‘under 15’, or ‘over 21’ is still evolving, but improvements in cross-referencing data sources like electoral registers and national ID systems are making the process more precise. For instance, France’s national ID card scheme has simplified gaming age verification for mobile phone accounts, ensuring fewer anomalies and better differentiation between age groups.
As we accelerate towards this new world, platforms must grapple with the mechanics of enforcement. As seen in Arkansas, passing a rule is one thing; implementing it effectively is quite another. Nevertheless, stricter age verification standards are inevitable and will soon become the norm.
Our version of the most up-to-date protection systems is Authenticate. It provides a seamless check—so smooth the user isn’t even aware it’s happening—without verification codes or other hassles. This makes it the most advanced solution for age verification in gaming services.
Authenticate works by using real-time data from telecom providers to verify users’ mobile phone accounts. This creates a near-perfect insight into whether the user is an adult or minor. As a result, we’re encouraging our clients to adopt this system to stay compliant with increasingly stringent regulations. Its popularity is growing, making it a clear leader in the field of age verification online gambling.
Last updated on January 30, 2025
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