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Across Europe and beyond, retailers are rethinking how they verify age. Whether for vapes, alcohol, gaming, or age-restricted promotions, the challenge is always the same: how to ensure compliance and protect young people without compromising customer experience or privacy.
We believe that protecting privacy and ensuring compliance can go hand in hand. Our technology has already powered millions of anonymous age checks, with many of those taking place in stores in the UK, France, and the US. Each check is fast, accurate, and privacy-first, all without collecting or storing any biometric data.
Now, we’re extending that work through two major in-store trials currently underway in Switzerland and Austria, exploring how our privacy-preserving technology can enable compliant, automated age verification and age-gated promotions.
Powering privacy-first retail innovation in Switzerland and Austria
Privately is currently powering two significant retail trials in Switzerland and Austria, each exploring how privacy-by-design age verification can support in-store compliance and responsible marketing.
In Switzerland, Privately’s AI-based solution is being used to age-gate access to in-store promotions, ensuring that only verified adults see certain offers or advertisements. The early results have been highly promising, showing that facial age estimation can be seamlessly integrated into the retail experience to enable privacy-conscious, real-world compliance.
Meanwhile, in Austria, our technology is being trialled in collaboration with major retail partners to support anonymous, automated age estimation at the point of sale, helping to streamline the verification process and remove the need for intrusive ID checks.
Both trials highlight a growing recognition across Europe that age assurance and privacy do not have to be at odds. By keeping every age check entirely on-device – which means that no image or biometric data ever leaves the user’s phone or the store’s camera - Privately is setting the benchmark for ethical AI deployment.
Demonstrating impact in France
In France, where vape retailers face fines of up to €750 for selling to minors, our AgeAI solution is helping prevent thousands of underage sales every day.
Recent field data showed that AgeAI devices in French vape stores and tabacs scan an average of 283 customers per day, identifying three underage attempts per store daily.
By providing instant and anonymous facial age estimation, AgeAI removes the subjectivity from manual ID checks and reduces friction between staff and customers. A built-in digital refusals register automatically records denied sales, simplifying compliance and accountability for store managers.
As enforcement of underage vape sales tightens across France, automation and privacy-preserving AI are proving essential to keeping retailers compliant, while also demonstrating that technology can be used responsibly to protect young people.
The global shift toward responsible, privacy-first age assurance
From tabacs in France to vape stores in the UK, from new pilots in Austria and Switzerland to deployments in the US, one thing is clear: the future of age verification is fast, frictionless, and privacy-preserving.
Privately’s privacy-by-design approach provides the foundation for this shift. It allows businesses to operate responsibly, customers to verify age securely, and regulators to see what ethical AI looks like in action.
As more countries explore digital ID and eID frameworks, these in-store trials show what’s already possible: compliance without compromise, and privacy without exception.
Understand how your organisation can take the effort out of age verification. Get in touch one of the team here.
