ACCS Accredits OCR Labs Global’s Enterprise API For Age Verification

Digital Identity
04.05.2023 08:50 am

OCR Labs Global, a world leader in digital ID verification, has announced it has gained accreditation from ACCS that its Enterprise API meets PAS 1296 for age verification services.

The ACCS certifies online and offline systems for confirming age and identity, such as passport scanners, biometric technology, and age verification software. ACCS is a conformity assessment body accredited by the United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS) with a mission to protect children from the harm associated with access to age-restricted products and services.

Online age verification is becoming more important due to regulators around the world requiring age-gating for adult content and products online. This year, the French government introduced the first "digital certificate" for people viewing online pornography, asking them to prove they are at least 18 years old.

In the UK, the Online Safety Bill will shortly require online service providers to age-verify users who wish to access adult content online. With OCR Labs Global's Enterprise Product, businesses can verify the age of their users and avoid fines and prosecution for allowing underage users to access their websites.

OCR Labs Global’s Zero Bias AI technology pioneers the use of generative AI to train deep neural network systems to protect against discrimination on the basis of race, age and gender. It is essential to ensure that the person submitting their facial biometrics for verification is who they say they are and not a fraudster using someone else’s image or a child posing as an adult.

In addition to the ACCS certification, NIST-accredited labs have also confirmed that OCR Labs Global meets recognised international biometric standards for fraud and penetration attack detection. It is also a UK government (DIATF) certified identity service provider (ISP). OCR Labs Global is the most certified ISP, both in terms of the extensiveness of standards and test-scoring performance.

Peter Violaris, Head of Legal, Compliance and Risk, EMEA for OCR Labs Global, comments, "This accreditation demonstrates our commitment to world-leading age verification services by benchmarking our service against a recognised age verification code or practice.

OCR Labs Global is set to lead the market in providing accurate, entirely automated and robust document-based age verification services to help our customers comply with the new age verification regulations and safeguard their information.”

OCR Labs Global verifies 16,000+ identity documents in over 220 countries/territories and processes 142 typesets/languages, matching people with their government-issued IDs worldwide, helping fight fraud and remain compliant with identity verification requirements for Anti-Money Laundering (AML) and Know-Your-Customer (KYC).