TruAge-integrated mDLs and digital wallets are creating a more secure future for age-restricted purchases.
Let's work together to ensure the responsible sales of age-restricted products.
Incorporate the W3C global standard for digital age verification into your service.
TruAge is a privacy-first, not-for-profit digital age-verification solution that allows sellers to keep age-restricted products out of the hands of underage consumers while keeping customer information secure.
After a quick setup period, TruAge integrates into POS systems to scan any valid U.S. driver's license, TruAge-enabled mDL, or the TruAge app. It reads just four points of data to verify age: driver’s license number, issuing state, birthdate, and expiration date, then encrypts that data in an anonymous digital token.
Other age verification services can expose up to 33+ pieces of personally identifiable information about customers, including their full name, address, height, weight, eye color, and more. These systems offer little control over how or where your information is used: they may look up even more information in for-profit, third-party databases, or they may sell information to them.
TruAge only looks at the four pieces of information legally required to verify age: driver’s license number, issuing state, birthdate, and expiration date. Those data points are then encrypted as anonymous digital tokens, meaning they are never visible to the cashier or store, even after checkout. The information in those tokens cannot be traced back to an individual without legal authorization from a court-issued subpoena.
TruAge is also SOC-2 compliant and part of W3C's Verifiable Credentials 2.0, making it the de facto global standard in digital age verification.
TruAge is a not-for-profit funded and developed by NACS and Conexxus. Additional funding is provided by leading retailers and manufacturers across industries who are committed to preventing underage access to age-restricted products and limiting overconsumption.
Over 300 retail brands have activated TruAge in their stores nationwide, including convenience stores, bodegas, small grocers, tobacco and vape shops, liquor stores, bars, restaurants and more. TruAge will be expanding soon to stadiums, arenas, medium and large grocery stores, and mass retailers.
Activating TruAge is simple and can start within 24 hours. After you reach out below, we can help integrate TruAge with your existing POS to get you up and running quickly. You will be invited to create an account on the TruAge self-service portal, where you will enter and manage your store information.
TruAge is 100% free for all convenience stores and many small retailers. You never pay per scan, per store, or per lookup. No license fees, no per-transaction costs, no hardware upgrades.
TruAge is available at a low cost to large grocery stores and mass retailers.
No. Staff can scan driver’s licenses as normal with their existing hardware. Consumers check out as usual, no interruptions.
Optionally, individuals can add TruAge to compatible mobile driver’s licenses or download the TruAge app. TruAge processes these ID types the same way as a physical driver’s license, keeping things simple for frontline employees.
Currently TruAge only works with state-issued driver’s licenses. Passports will be ready to use in early 2026.
Our launch marketing material toolkit only features the TruAge brand. Many retailers prefer to keep the brands separate so that customers know they are not capturing any personal information when scanning IDs.
That said, we recognize that some retailers may prefer a co-branded approach. In the TruAge portal, there are templates available that retailers can customize with their brand/logo.
Larger brands should reach out to marketing@mytruage.org to collaborate on custom materials.
No. Sellers can customize their carding policies on a store-by-store or company-wide basis in TruAge, except where required by federal, state, or county laws.
There are four critical ways that TruAge protects sellers:
Eliminates human error.
When an employee scans a valid U.S. driver’s license, TruAge-enabled mDL, or the TruAge app, TruAge does all the work. Sellers are protected from manual entry mistakes and staff are protected by shifting the burden of compliance to the system.
Appends proof-of-age verification directly to transaction logs.
Should law enforcement question the legality of an age-restricted sale, retailers can access TruAge transaction logs to prove that age was verified without exposing customers’ personal information.
Allows sellers to manage employee compliance with their carding policies.
TruAge offers location-by-location reports on carding rates, % declines, volume limitation declines, and more — allowing you to monitor activity and spot training gaps before they become problems.
Protects customer data, keeps costs low.
Several competitors entering the age-verification space are doing so out of a desire to gain access to customer-level transaction data, while charging retailers the equivalent of a swipe fee to verify age. TruAge ensures that sellers are not exposing consumers to a violation of privacy, potential data sale, or data breach and don’t incur additional costs for verifying age.
Yes. TruAge is designed to accommodate a wide array of regulations governing age-restricted products. In jurisdictions that set volume, purchase timing, or product-specific limits, TruAge can be configured to automatically track the number of items purchased by a given ID and decline the purchase if that individual has reached the limit for that time period or product.
TruAge does not gather more customer data to enforce these limits. For example, in a jurisdiction that only allows customers to purchase one vape per week, if a customer were to try to purchase a second vape, TruAge would only see that a given age-verified token is trying to purchase a limited product again. It does not re-access the customer’s encrypted driver's license number, issuing state, birthdate, or expiration date. Additionally, information about those purchases expires and is not stored, even within the encrypted token, after that window lapses.
Never. We don’t store any personal information, so there’s nothing to sell. Further, as a not-for-profit company, we have no incentive to share any data.
TruAge makes identity theft extremely difficult in comparison to existing proof-of-age methods. No personal information is transmitted during a purchase, so there’s nothing to steal.
Two features make that difficult. First, the store employee must make sure that the person attempting to make the purchase matches the photo on the TruAge app or in the mobile driver’s license. Second, each QR code is a single-use token and expires after a brief amount of time or upon scan.
TruAge is already integrated with Verifone, Invenco by GVR, Clover, Pinnacle, PlatformPOS, Tenderfoot, and Minor Decliner. Additionally, TruAge Verify’s POS companion option enables TruAge to run on any POS system that is not currently integrated with TruAge.
More integrations are coming soon including Toast, NCR Voyix, GK, Oracle, and Shift4.
No. TruAge integrates directly into your POS system and works with your existing 2D scanners. TruAge Verify hardware is entirely optional and designed for sellers with specific use cases, not as a future upsell opportunity.
No. Our optional TruAge Verify hardware is available as both a handheld for access control to age-restricted areas and as a ride-along companion for non-integrated POS systems.
Yes. TruAge is a lightweight age verification layer designed to easily integrate with external services. We offer both comprehensive documentation and dedicated development resources to development partners. Most projects require at most a couple weeks of development time — some are as short as one day.
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Retailers
Stadiums, Arenas, and Events
Delivery and E-Commerce
Trust and Safety
mDLs and Digital Wallets
TruAge Verify™
