Call for proposals | Age verification technology in alcohol sales

The Home Office has recently issued a call for proposals for technological solution to facilitate digital solutions to ID verification in the sphere of alcohol sales.

The Home Office has worked with the Office for Product Safety and Standards (OPSS) to develop proposals for a Regulatory ‘Sandbox’ to allow the trial of technologies.  The aim is to assess and test innovative approaches to age verification, such as digital ID and other products with age assurance attributes, in the specific context of the sale of alcohol under the Licensing Act 2003.

The call for proposals makes clear that approval of a test or trial does not imply that, even if successful, it will result in legislative change or improvement, although it will be taken into account alongside the views of all stakeholders in usual policy development process.

Reported Participants in the trials are:

• Co-op
• VerifiID
• 18North/1account
• Tesco
• Asda
• Aldi
• Sthaler/FinGo
• Fujitsu
• Morrisons
• Innovation Technology

Trials can run until the end of May 2022.

The call for proposals sets out the parameters of the technologies which will be considered for the trial, conditions of the ‘sandbox’ and how to submit a proposal.