Customers may be asked to show their fingerprint to buy booze in the future
Whether you enjoy having to show your ID to purchase alcohol or not can tell you a lot about a person's age - sometimes it can be flattering, other times more annoying. But new technology could mean our faces or palm image are used instead of having to dig around to find our ID.
Biometric systems that can "read" a person's face or palm image in order to determine whether they are old enough to buy alcohol are gaining popularity at sports stadiums and liquor stores in the states. They're not only handy tools for sellers, but they could also offer more privacy for customers instead of handing over a driver's license or another form of ID.
However, there are fears that there could be potential abuses of facial recognition systems as a result. Legislative proposals in New York and Washington state would let bars, restaurants, and other outlets selling adult products verify a customer's age through biometric>
Concerns have been raised about the security of the system (Getty Images)The New York bill would require biometric data to be encrypted, and also ban businesses from selling data to third parties. State Senator and bill sponsor James Skoufis told the New York Post: "This is the new frontier or age verification." He added: "it does advance the interests of convenience."
Simultaneously, biometric ID systems, such as those sold by Amazon, Microsoft, CLEAR, and other smaller vendors, are being rolled out in real-world situations. The Las Vegas Raiders' Allegiant Stadium allows football fans enrolled in CLEAR's ID system, which is used at airport security lines, to order booze from their seats using face recognition on their phone. The same system is in place for the NHL's San Jose Sharks at SAP Center.
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Meanwhile, a brewery at Coors Field in Denver, home of baseball's Colorado Rockies, recently started letting customers wave their palm over a scanner to verify age. Customers here must be enrolled in Amazon One's system, the same used by shoppers who pay with their palms at Whole Foods, with customers being able to enroll on the spot.
Sam Hall, chief product officer at CLEAR, told Axios: " No information is ever shared with a partner without your explicit consent."
Fingerprints could be used to pay for products which need age verification (Getty Images)He added: "We put up a screen [on your phone] that says, 'The Las Vegas Raiders would like to know you're over 21 - are you okay sharing this information?'
"If you click 'yes', they're able to send a beer over to your seat without you ever having to pull an ID out of your pocket."
He says the system is "way more appealing to most people than passing your license down" a row od stadium seats. From the vendors' perspective, it's also time- and labour-saving.
Some systems require users to pre-enroll, which can be done quickly through an app. Others use neural networks to estimate the age of the person looking at the screen at a checkout.
A system called MyCheckr "takes an image of your face, analyses that image, and returns whether or not you're over the 'challenge age'" to buy booze or cigarettes, explained Andrew O'Brien, product manager at Innovative Technology Ltd., the UK company behind the system. MyCheckr is being used at Bestway Group alcohol stores, and uses an algorithm trained by looking at millions of people of varying ages.
Mr O'Brien said it's a lot more reliable than a store clerk, and completely anonymous. MyCheckr doesn't store or transmit any data about the people whose face it scans.
Customers can already pay with their palm at Whole Foods (Getty Images/iStockphoto)"We know that people are not that good at estimating age," said Mr O'Brien. "As we get older, policemen look younger, dentists, doctors all look younger - we're best at estimating people's age closer to our own age."
He added: "We're seeing a lot of uptake. All the major retailers here are beginning to take it up and test it."
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However, as the systems become more widespread, there are privacy concerns, despite assurances, as well as issues regarding racial discrimination. Letting an underage person buy a drink is one issue, but a worse one would be facial recognition systems that falsely link people to crimes they didn't commit.
In fact, there's a movement to ban facial recognition in stores. But despite public concerns, biometric recognition is expanding in a whole host of ways, not just age verification.
With alcohol vending machines and self-service 'pour walls' popping up at hotels, bars and other venues, more patrons are being able to verify their age using CLEAR, which has 16 million members, according to Mr Hall. The same tech from CLEAR is also being used in other ways, to verify your profile on LinkedIn, for example, or to prove you have a valid driver's licence at the Avis counter when renting a car.
So while there may be concerns about the potential misuse of the technology, it is proving to be convenient for both customer and retailer - especially in an era where more people are ditching their wallets already, relying on things like ApplePay and Google Pay. And it looks like the prevalence is only set to grow.
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