Age-verification systems help retailers stay on the right side of the law

In the 1988 classic, "A Night at the Roxbury," brothers Doug and Steve Butabi try valiantly to gain entrance to the exclusive club, "The Roxbury." No dice. It's not that they're underage or anything. It's just that they're not hip enough. And if you're not on the list, you're not getting in.

In the tobacco industry, ID's under the age of 18 are the Butabi brothers for storeowners and tobacco retailers everywhere. With tobacco legislation becoming more stringent, and fines and penalties growing much harsher, tobacco retailers have more concerns on their hands than ever.

That makes the process of age verification a much bigger issue. And now companies across the technology industry are jumping on board to help make life easier for tobacco retailers and liquor-store owners.

Lew Hoff, president of Bartizan Data Systems, based in Yonkers, N.Y., understands the importance of age verification. Bartizan, which has been around since the early 1970s, has just recently gotten into the realm of age verification, and for good reason.

Over the last five years, with the tobacco industry becoming much more involved in its dedication to crack down on and eliminate underage consumption, age verification has become a major challenge. Furthermore, with most states adopting driver's licenses with either a magnetic stripe of a 2D bar code, it has become easier for software companies to develop systems to read such ID's.

Bartizan, which also specialized in ID software and equipment for security purposes, has found the interest strong among the tobacco retailers it has dealt with.

"The idea is deterrence," said Hoff. "What we're attempting to do with these different means is prevent ID's from buying alcohol or tobacco underage."

Bartizan's ID Detective system represents one of the latest developments in the age verification boom, which continues to progress as the needs of the retailers change and adapt to the current climate. ID Detective is a system capable of scanning the driver's license and capturing the information stored in the magnetic stripe of bar code, allowing tobacco retailers (and those in similar businesses) to verify their customer base and keep in-depth records of their customers.

"There is a fairly good array of choices out there now whereas a couple years ago there wasn't much choice," Hoff said. "We've come a long way."

Reporting to the MAX including Point of Sale and Non-profit Versions, based in Boise, Idaho, offers another choice for tobacco retailers, a point-of-sale system which allows storeowners to be secure with the age-verification process.

With the Reporting to the MAX system, when a tobacco or alcohol product is scanned at the register, a pop-up screen will appear. At that point, the merchant can either enter the birth date of the customer into the system or scan in the customer's driver's license. By scanning in the driver's license, the Reporting to the MAX system will read either the magnetic stripe or the 2D bar code, storing all the information off of the driver's license into a database.

The database has important business ramifications, said Reporting to the MAX Sales manager Michael Brown.

"The retailer can at the end of the day, or at the end of the week, run a report to find out exactly who came in, who they scanned," Brown said. "Seeing what people came in, the retailer now will have those people's names, addresses, state and whether or not they were old enough or underage."

The Bartizan system, ID Detective, also has the capabilities of building a database, a feature which Hoff sees as invaluable from a business perspective.

"That's probably a better mailing list than you could go out and buy because it's people who are in your neighborhood, who have made purchases," Hoff said. "And now you have their name and their address to use for your own mailings and you can get a fair idea of what it is they like to buy. In that way, you can make it pay for itself."

Added David Thomas, the president of Intellilink Services Inc. in Huntsville, Ala.: "Not only are the retailers complying with the law by carding, but at the same time they have compliance, they're also building a database of information.

"That way, say in the future there's a Marlboro buydown or a Winston buydown, they know who all their customers are that are buying those products and they can send them a postcard saying, 'Hey, we've got a buydown for this particular product.' So not only can the retailer get information regarding the type of products each individual customer buys, but they can get some age-related demographics which might say, 'Between these ages, here's the products the customers are buying.'"

In a sense, by using standard age-verification systems, retailers can compile these mailing lists that might otherwise require a lot more effort and research.

Another important feature of many age-verification systems is the added security the database offers against potential penalties. Say, for instance, an underage customer comes in to buy a tobacco product using the ID of an older brother who is of age. The merchant can scan the driver's license, reading the magnetic stripe of bar code to see that the ID is indeed valid. Yet without a foolproof way of making sure it is actually the customer's ID, the retailer might stumble unknowingly into selling tobacco products to a minor.

If such an error were to occur and the retailer was later approached by a law-enforcement agency, which said "Hey, look, you sold tobacco to an underage consumer," the retailer can go back in the system and determine where the problem occurred.

"What the merchant can do in that situation is show that they did indeed read the license," Hoff said. "And with that information stored on whoever presented that ID, we'll have the driver's license number and all of the other data connected with it will be recorded along with the date and the time it was presented. So if the business owner then has to go to court, they can now show that, 'Hey, we made every effort in our power to verify the person's age and validate the ID.'"

Reporting to the MAX has a similar feature.

"There will be times when a sale will come into question and someone will come to the retailer and say, 'Did you sell this person alcohol or tobacco?'" Brown said. "Our system allows them to say 'Yes, I did, but here's what they gave us in terms of ID.' The cool thing about that technology is that if someone comes in with a phony driver's license that would otherwise fool some clerks, it's really, really, difficult to fool the system reading the ID. I really question the motivation of someone trying to duplicate a 2D bar code. It's very difficult to do and get it to be encrypted with the same code that that particular state uses on their driver's licenses."

Intellilink offers similar protection, while also providing systems which can consolidate the information from several related stores - say a tobacco retailer has a chain of shops - into one central information system. Thomas said that for tobacco storeowners out there, it's a no-brainer to invest in some sort of age-verification system.

"It's not really so much the research in figuring out why you should do it," Thomas said. "The law says you have to do age verification. And so long as you have to do it, you might as well get all of the side benefits you can by verifying the age through a system."

According to Brown, the technology in this realm of ID verification is becoming so advanced that the FAA has had discussions about implementing it in the nation's airports in the aftermath of Sept. 11.

So for tobacco retailers, who face fines or stiffer penalties for violation the law by selling to underage consumers, age-verification systems can be of vital importance for verifying the age of customers and validating ID's.

At a recent tobacco show, Brown was involved in roundtable discussions with several business owners who had been the victims of sting operations.

"Obviously, those people said it was absolutely critical to invest in some kind of age-verification system," he said. "Obviously for the people that have never been hurt in a situation like that, it's not an issue. They might not see it coming. But with states becoming more and more stringent in cracking down on underage tobacco and liquor purchases, systems like this are becoming more and more prevalent."