Top Age Verification Compliance Trends from 2025
Age-restricted sales aren’t slowing down. If anything, the market is getting bigger, more complex, and more scrutinised. Retailers are juggling growth, customer experience, staffing pressures, and increasingly technology-led enforcement — all while trying to keep every transaction compliant.
In a recent Serve Legal webinar, Ali and Matt shared what our 2025 audit data is showing across sectors, channels, and real-world selling conditions. The headline is simple: compliance performance isn’t random. The patterns are there and if you know where to look, you can reduce risk quickly and prove due diligence with confidence.
What the 2025 data is telling us
The most useful data doesn’t just tell you your overall pass rate. It tells you where and why performance changes.
In the webinar, Ali and Matt broke down 2025 pass rates and behaviours across a range of factors, including:
- Pass rate trends through the years
- Age verification pass rates by sector (2025)
- Delivery vs in-store performance (2025)
- Gambling pass rates by operator type (2025)
- Pass rates by product category (2025)
- Alcohol outcomes by till type (2025)
- The role of eye contact at the till, and how early engagement links to improved outcomes
- Convenience store outcomes by day of week (2025)
- In-store outcomes by time of day (2025)
- “No ID” audit process results and what the breakdown reveals
The takeaway: “risk” is not evenly distributed. Certain environments, time windows, and interaction behaviours are consistently linked to weaker outcomes and that’s exactly what makes targeted improvement possible.
If you’re treating underperformance as a general training problem, you’re likely spending time and budget in the wrong places.
What’s coming next: the landscape is shifting
The webinar also looked forward to what we expect to shape the next phase of age verification:
1) Expansion of age-restricted categories
More categories are being scrutinised, and retailers should expect age assurance obligations to broaden rather than shrink.
2) Continued shift in tobacco and vape sales
Sales patterns continue to change, bringing new compliance risks and new expectations around controls.
3) Stricter, technology-focused enforcement
We’re moving toward a world where digital proof and tech-enabled checks become more common — raising the bar for consistency and auditability.
4) Digital ID and wider age assurance adoption
As adoption grows, retailers will need clarity on where tech helps, where it doesn’t, and how to ensure staff still own the interaction rather than outsourcing judgement to a prompt.
What retailers should do now
If you want immediate, practical steps based on the patterns in the data:
- Measure performance by site, shift, day, and product, not just overall pass rate
- Identify where results drop (time windows, formats, tills, or teams) and target support there
- Coach visible behaviours that correlate with better outcomes, not just policy wording
- Test consistently and independently to build reliable due diligence evidence
- Prepare for a more tech-driven future without assuming technology alone solves human behaviour
Watch the webinar for the full breakdown
This article only scratches the surface of the 2025 findings. The webinar includes the detailed sector comparisons, channel splits, and behavioural insights that can directly inform training, operational controls, and risk strategy.
If you’re responsible for compliance, retail operations, brand standards, or customer experience — it’s worth your time to watch. Find the link on our resources page here.
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