We’re celebrating a huge moment in our journey: Yoti has now completed over 1 billion age checks!
When we started out, we had a simple but powerful ambition: to help people prove their age without revealing their full identity. We recognised early on that not everyone has access to a document or always feels comfortable using it. That’s why we innovated and developed facial age estimation.
Reaching this milestone – across facial age estimation, Digital IDs, identity document checks and our other secure age-checking methods – shows that our technology is being used safely and responsibly around the world.
Why this milestone matters
Scale – Completing 1 billion checks shows that our technology is being used at real-world scale, across multiple industries, countries and contexts. Whether it’s for social media, adult, retail, dating, gaming, gambling or vaping brands, our solutions are trusted to help enhance platform safety and ensure age-appropriate access to goods, services and experiences.
Privacy first, always – Our age checking approach is simple: we work out your age and we pass on an age result to the organisation – nothing more. We stick to the principle of data minimisation, meaning that we only use the information we need, and we don’t keep it for longer than necessary. That’s the foundation of our privacy-by-design philosophy and it’s what makes our system trusted worldwide.
Relevant for today’s world – As governments and regulators push for stronger age checks to protect children and improve online safety, we’re proud to provide businesses and their customers a choice of privacy-friendly solutions.
Built on trust – Reaching 1 billion checks reflects the fact that businesses, regulators and individuals have placed (and are still placing) their trust in a system that’s designed to offer age-appropriate experiences to people all around the world.
How we got here
From the very beginning, our goal has been to help people prove details about themselves without oversharing personal data. Along the way, we’ve:
- Invested heavily in research and development of a range of verification, estimation and inference approaches to give choice to consumers and organisations, both large and small.
- Trained our facial age estimation model to perform fairly across age, gender and skin tone.
- Enabled reusable approaches with strong authentication via age tokens and passkeys. Users can now also add their estimated age (using facial age estimation) to their Yoti Digital ID app.
- Taken part in benchmarking and independent reviews.
- Implemented world-class liveness detection and anti-spoofing to prevent fraudulent attempts to trick our age checks.
- Partnered with digital platforms, retailers, social networks, child safety organisations (for reporting and removing sexual images and videos) and other age-restricted services to make responsible verification accessible everywhere.
- Worked with dozens of online safety organisations to help guide us in developing our technology, ethically and responsibly.
What this means
For people: Billions of individuals can prove age instantly, without revealing unnecessary personal information or worrying about your data. All our age checking methods are safe, quick and simple.
For businesses: You can meet regulatory requirements and protect individuals while respecting their privacy. With a billion checks behind us, our partners know our solutions work in the real world.
What’s next
We’re just getting started. Next up, we’re focused on:
- Further accuracy improvements to our facial age estimation technology, across all groups.
- Expanding globally to regions where age assurance and identity document coverage are limited.
- Adding new approaches and working with regulators, so they understand that consumers are looking for reusable approaches. These include age tokens with passkeys and estimation approaches embedded within a digital wallet.
- New use cases both offline and in person.
- Ongoing regulatory alignment with frameworks like the UK’s Online Safety Act, the EU’s Digital Services Act and Australia’s online safety legislation.
- Continuous commitment to privacy, ensuring every innovation respects every individual’s rights.
Looking ahead
Reaching 1 billion age checks is a huge milestone. But beyond that, it’s a signal of real, measurable trust. It proves that privacy-first, responsible technology can scale globally and make a true difference.
Here’s to the next billion – and to a future where proving age is straightforward and inclusive for all.
