Age assurance community gathers to work on global standards for local regulations

The global community of age assurance stakeholders is preparing to meet in Amsterdam to discuss a rapidly changing regulatory landscape, and an emerging biometrics market. Accordingly, the 2025 Global Age Assurance Standards Summit is back with a few adaptations of its own, Age Check Certification Scheme (ACCS) CEO Tony Allen told Biometric Update in an interview.

The event will be held April 8 to 10, and details about its format, attendees, and topics in focus will emerge over the weeks ahead.

The inaugural Summit was held last year in Manchester, England. It featured a preview of NIST’s report on biometric facial age estimation, pitches of different age assurance methods by regulators and technology demonstrations like one on interoperability through PKI by Yoti and Luciditi among its highlights.

Age assurance has become a topic of even more prominent global debate over the past year, with laws and regulatory changes proposed and coming into force around the world.

The discussion policy-makers are having has changed as well, Allen says. “There was still debate going on this time last year about whether it could be done. Is there a technological barrier, a fundamental barrier to doing age assurance in general. I think that’s gone.”

The communique issued at the conclusion of the 2024 Summit declared the technology ready and set the direction for the development of age assurance policy and technology.

“We’re now in a position where we have a consensus that it can be done, a consensus that there need to be international standards to enable it to happen, and that come what may regulators all over the world are looking to regulate this activity,” Allen says.

That includes regulators from Australia, the UK, various American states and the European Commission.

The conference is intended to help them, and other stakeholders, Allen says, by “looking at the role of standards and certification in supporting those good regulatory outcomes.”

This year’s event introduces country delegations, and Allen says organizers are hoping to have delegations representing all of G20 member nations other than Russia, Allen says. Delegations are confirmed from about half so far, including the UK, Brazil, Australia, U.S., Germany and France. Allen is also hoping for engagement from the Global South.

Delegations will be made up of about a dozen people each, including product, content and data regulators from each, plus standards bodies, law enforcement representatives and NGOs.

There will be global plenaries and mini-sessions, many of them vendor presentations, as well as a tech showcase.

Plenty left to debate

The elephant in the room is cost, and who will pay for it. Allen points out this must be analyzed in tandem with adoption, since digital ID will not be mandated, and age assurance is likely to see gradual uptake.

“The consensus that we have at the moment is that somebody should pay but it shouldn’t be me,” Allen says. “Among all the actors in the space, that’s the consensus that’s been reached.”

One of the fundamental underlying flaws Allen sees in the approach of UK ID app wallet using mDL rails, or the EUDI Wallet, is that “no one’s really thought through the commercial operability of that. It’s based on the idea that the wallet is provided free of charge, and that a customer or consumer is prepared to pay X.”

The EUDI Wallet must be a taxpayer-funded model, and the PID within the EUDI Wallet is taxpayer-funded.

“You’re not even permitted to privatize it within the structure of the EUDI Wallet,” Allen says. “What you then do to develop apps associated with the PID is potentially open to commercial wallets, but if the infrastructure has been built and developed already, by in this case the Swedish government, why would you then invest in doing that again.”

In short, “it’s not going to be an overnight sensation. It’s going to end up being very complex.” In the end, Allen believes five or six “core approaches” are likely to emerge.

In the meantime, political posturing dominates the headlines. Allen notes that Pornhub’s much-publicized self-imposed ban did not apply to most of the thousands of domains it operates.

“They did it for the most popular one that you might come to first, to make a political point but everything else carried on as normal.”

Allen advises those considering attending that the core group of attendees is not likely to buy age assurance products, but is likely to create the regulations that create the enabling environment for them.

Registrations are now open for the 2025 Global Age Assurance Standards Summit.

Article Topics

Age Assurance Standards Summit (2025)  |  Age Check Certification Scheme (ACCS)  |  age estimation  |  age verification  |  biometrics  |  digital ID  |  digital identity  |  digital wallets