Swiss smart data capture specialist Scandit has developed a way to help retailers automate and verify self-checkout purchases of age-restricted items.

The Age Verified Self-Checkout can reduce queue delays, remove avoidable staff intervention and improve compliance.

Built for retailers selling products such as alcohol, tobacco and medication, it delivers a fully autonomous checkout with no additional kiosk hardware needed. It addresses one of the biggest sources of friction in self-checkout: the need for shop assistants to intervene manually on the nine billion age-restricted, self-checkout transactions globally each year. With this, 80% of age checks are resolved automatically in seconds, removing the need for staff intervention, while the verification process is six-times faster for the shopper.

The streamlined checks result in five per cent more transactions across a retailer’s full self-checkout fleet leading to shorter queues and increased sales, especially during peak hours.

By turning a smartphone into a private, secure, instant age-check tool, it allows shoppers to verify their age in under ten seconds with no app download required primarily via face estimation technology or scanning their ID as an alternative.

In addition to helping retailers avoid the cost and maintenance burden of hardware-based alternatives, it helps them improve operations in three key areas:

• Fraud prevention: The photo-comparison technology catches underage ID fraud that card-reader options cannot and staff may not, including underage customers using someone else’s ID.
• Labour optimisation: Automation frees shop assistants from routine age checks and uncomfortable situations, while allowing them to focus on higher-value tasks.
• Revenue lift: The always-available technology keeps self-checkout lanes moving, leading to increased sales.

“Retailers are under pressure to deliver faster, more convenient self-checkout experiences, yet age-restricted sales remain a persistent bottleneck and one that only intensifies as self-checkout fleets scale,” said Christian Floerkemeier, CTO of Scandit (www.scandit.com). “Today, retailers are forced to choose between absorbing the ongoing labour cost of manual checks or investing in proprietary hardware, neither of which scales efficiently. Age Verified Self-Checkout removes this trade-off by automating compliance in a fast, secure and hardware-free way, which reduces intervention and optimises labour.”

Powered by Scandit’s smart data capture with vision AI, it marks the firm’s first entry into biometrics and has been designed with privacy at its core. With 100% on-device processing, no biometric or ID data are transmitted or stored by Scandit or retailers. It also complies with key standards, including GDPR, CCPA, ISO/IEC 27566-1, ISO27001 and UKAS Challenge 25 certification.

Age Verified Self-Checkout (www.scandit.com/solutions/age-verified-self-checkout/) is designed to be fast and intuitive with a selfie-first design that will verify most shoppers in one step. When a shopper scans a restricted item at self-checkout, the kiosk displays a QR code. The shopper scans the code with their smartphone, which opens a verification page in the browser. The customer then takes a quick selfie, and on-device vision AI estimates their age instantly. If the estimate is above the retailer’s threshold, the checkout continues automatically. If the estimate falls below the threshold, the customer is prompted to scan an ID, which is read on-device and compared against the selfie photo to help detect underage customers attempting to use someone else’s ID. The kiosk then receives a single pass-fail signal.

It is suitable for grocery, supermarket, fuel and convenience retail environments with high self-checkout volumes, strong demand for age-restricted products and limited store labour availability.