Age-restricted sales

Selling age-restricted products online presents issues. Retailers must take steps to prevent sales to underage customers.

This guide applies to all products that have age restrictions on sales, such as:

• alcohol
• tobacco
• nicotine inhaling products (including e-cigarettes/vapes or refills) 
• spray paints
• fireworks
• video recordings and games

See what products and services are age-restricted by law?

Duty of retailers

Retailers must not sell age-restricted products online to people who are under the minimum legal age. This means setting up systems to verify the age of potential purchasers to ensure they are above the minimum legal age to purchase a product. Legally, retailers must take ‘all reasonable precautions’ and ‘exercise all due diligence’ to avoid committing an offence.

You should regularly check and update your systems to find weaknesses and solve any problems. You should keep up to date with the latest technology.

The law does not define ‘all reasonable precautions’ or ‘due diligence’. However, it is best practice to take positive steps and precautions to comply with the law.

To take these steps and precautions, you must first analyse the risks and research the options available to overcome them.

Checks unlikely to satisfy 'due diligence'

The following steps are unlikely to be enough to comply with the law:

• Relying on the purchaser confirming they are over the minimum age.
• Asking the purchaser simply to provide a date of birth.
• Using tick boxes to ask purchasers to confirm they are over the minimum age
• Using a general disclaimer such as: 'Anyone ordering this product from our website will be deemed to be at least 18'.
• Using an 'accept' statement for the purchaser to confirm that they have read the terms and conditions and are over the minimum age.
• Using e-payment services such as PayPal, Nochex or Worldpay. These services may require a customer to be over 18, but they may not verify a user's age.
• Only accepting payment by credit card. Credit cards are not available to those under 18 but certain debit and prepaid cards are. Your payment systems are unlikely to be able to differentiate between the different types of cards, so it is essential that you have additional age verification in place.

Young people will seek to challenge conventions and test boundaries. Young people could potentially evade proof-of-age checks that are required on the high street when shopping online unless retailers make positive checks.

Age verification checks

Retailers should use robust age verification systems that are suitable for their specific business. Some examples include:

Age verification on delivery

Delivery drivers request valid proof of age to confirm that the purchaser is over the minimum age to buy the product. Third-party couriers may not offer this service. If charged with an offence and required to appear in court, licensees, their servants or agents, may rely on a defence of due diligence if they record the description of the proof of age document shown on delivery, in a delivery book or on an invoice.

Online age verification checks

Using software that uses various sources of information to verify both age and identity during the ordering process. These checks include using the electoral register and/or credit reference agencies. There are also businesses that offer online access to electoral register information, which could be used to verify a purchaser's age.

Follow-up offline checks

If you can’t verify a potential purchaser's age to conclude an online order, you should carry out further checks. For example, asking the customer to provide proof of age, which can then be checked.

Collect in-store

For some retailers that also have a high street presence, purchasers could view and reserve products online and then collect in-store, where staff can verify the customer’s age.

Many websites now require purchasers to set up accounts for future purchases, which means that age verification checks may only be required once.  

Cross-border sales

There are specific rules relating to cross-border distance sales of tobacco and e-cigarettes, including the need for an age verification system. In a number of situations, you may be required to register.