Here’s an example of how a point of sale (POS) system can fail as an age verification system for preventing underage sales.

A store was fined in 2019 for selling to underage. Since the first infraction, the point of sale has been updated so employees cannot override the birthdate requirement. Identification must be scanned or a date of birth manually entered. Sounds good so far, the store had an issue, and they upgraded their point of sale system to check for underage. 

Now the problem - the employee who sold the beverages entered his own birth date rather than check the ID of the agent. This is very common in the industry and easily undermines the point of sale system's effectiveness in customer age verification.

What’s the result; the store’s license to sell alcohol was suspended for 30 days. Wow, that significant, with alcohol sales account for up to 50% of the profits for most convenience stores, this is a significant finial impact to the store.

The impacts keep on coming. The store owner has to appear in front of the country council and be called out for this. He had to apologize publicly.  Additionally, this made the local news and national news.

So we have – loss of sales, public  humiliation, legal fees, and reputation hits, all from a simple bypass of the point system, So what can we do about this? -- 

The industry needs id scanning solutions that are robust, simple to use, have advanced technology, and meet emerging standards. Minor Decliner id scanners, including id scanner machines, have that solution set right now for age verification for id checking.

How does it work. 1st, the Minor Decliner id checker / id scanner reviews the id by scanning the barcode. We check for invalid and expired ids. Certain fake ids are detected this way. Then we give a sale / no sale answer and record this in the compliance log. This takes less than a second, so there is no extra work. Our drivers license verification scanner ensures accuracy and speed in age verification.

2nd, Minor Decliner is future-ready by having the capability to read digital drivers licenses and to work with digital identity tokens like the National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS) Truage™ protocol. The system gives you an added layer of protection and the assurance of meeting future standards for age verification. Our id card barcode scanner further enhances the reliability of our solutions.

Here is how you can get your compliance rate to 100% - Redundancy. For mission critical items it is a standard industry practice to have redundancy. This explains why you need to present your id multiple times at the airport.

By having an independent, redundant system, you can ensure you never sell to an underage customer. Minor Decliner is so easy to implement. Out of the box and power-on operation. Easy to implement with no internet required. Our id scanner for bars and clubs is designed to seamlessly integrate into your existing setup.

In closing , POS systems can be subject to easy work around’s for age verification. It like having a bank vault with a back door propped open. Minor Decliners stand-alone id scanners can give your operation the confidence to have a redundant system to insure sure you don’t hit the news to seeking to minors.