Age assurance providers not afraid of gov’t, big tech competition

The age assurance ecosystem is made up largely of small and medium-sized enterprises, like many other emerging technology markets. The UK government’s decision to issue not just a new digital ID credential in the form of a mobile driver’s license, but also the digital wallet from which it is shared, introduces the question of how the market’s SMEs will fair if they share it with a national government. At the same time, tech giants like Google and Apple and social media platforms like X and Meta are pointing the finger at each other as the party responsible for age-gating the online world.

Meta Director of Public Policy Helen Charles argued on day 2 of the Global Age Assurance Standards Summit 2025 that while her company uses Yoti for age assurance when teens try to change the stated age on their account, age assurance should also be applied at the operating system or app store level.

Minutes later, Iain Corby of the Age Verification Providers Association (AVPA) began moderating a session to address “The Future of Age Assurance in the Face of Competition from Government and Big Tech.”

Veratad CEO John Ahrens notes that government and big tech alike are positioned to warp the market in a way that stifles innovation and improvement. Facial age estimation which has seen steady improvement due to biometrics and digital identity developers pushing each other. But there is a natural bias common to entrepreneurs in favor of the opinion that they are best suited to handle their chosen task.

While acknowledging that, Ahrens believes the government’s role is to provide guardrails.

OneID CCO Keith Mabbit similarly points out that governments have a role in providing trusted information. But providing digital identity is quite complex, and the UK government has failed to take on providing it itself before.

Yoti Co-founder and CEO Robin Tombs agrees that government frameworks are helpful, as they encourage investment and competition. Right to Work checks have become significantly less costly with certifications for providers in place, he says.

The government may argue that not everyone will trust the private sector with their identity and attribute data, but the reverse is true as well.

“There’s no doubt there will be private identity wallets regardless,” he says, to allow people to do things the government isn’t interested in. An example of such a use case could be a contract with a large hotel chain that wants to issue its own credentials.

Corby asked Ahrens if the adoption of mobile driver’s licenses in the U.S. has impacted Veratad. The answer is yes, but making the credential usable is an opportunity for Veratad and other age assurance providers, at the same time. Veratad offers a choice of different credentials to its customers, including state-issued mDLs.

Aggregation businesses are popping up, Ahrens says. The threat to the private sector, he contends, is if the relying party no longer needs an intermediary to use the credentials.

Government involvement may also increase trust in a way that lifts all boats by growing the overall market, Corby argues.

The real competition is over user experience, Mabbit says, with practically every prospective client asking whether OneID will make its customer journey quicker.

Picking up on Mabbit’s earlier point, Tombs says that age assurance is less complicated than identity. The government does not want to take on responsibility for analyzing international IDs, or address verification, for instance. Big tech could, and can use age data for strategic purposes in a way that smaller providers can’t compete with.

Then again, the profit margins on such activities may be uninteresting to a company already making billions from selling phones.

On the issue of trust, Ahrens pointed to multiple examples of consumers being supposedly unwilling to share a piece of data about themselves, and then doing so en masse. Airports are just one of the recent industries in which biometrics adoption is growing rapidly, despite the eroding population that is resistant to it. Desensitization is a natural process for people and technology, he points out.

Perhaps the real threat to providers of a technology like facial age estimation is that consumers will simply give up, citing mountains of their data for sale on the dark web as a sign that privacy-preserving technology is no longer relevant to their online life.

At the same time, people remain concerned about personally targeted advertising, Mabbit notes.

A comment from the audience warned that Gov.uk Verify cost taxpayers hundreds of million of pounds before ultimately being shuttered. The government doesn’t talk to companies about their pain points, so is not well suited to address them.

The conversation concluded with a request from Corby for predictions. The panel expressed confidence in the prospects of age assurance providers, but also an expectation that the form of the market’s future stable state remains uncertain. Another panel on government involvement will still be needed at future Summits.

Article Topics

Age Assurance Standards Summit (2025)  |  age verification  |  AVPA  |  biometrics  |  digital wallets  |  OneID  |  regulation  |  user experience  |  Veratad  |  Yoti