Yoti has solidified its footing as a leading mobile ID pioneer in the UK: four of the United Kingdom’s major movie theaters have announced that they will accept the company’s eponymous app as proof of age for moviegoers.
Cineworld, Odeon, Showcase Cinemas, and Vue have all committed to accepting the Yoti app to confirm customers’ ages for age-restricted films. This means that concertgoers can prove they are of age without having to present a passport or other physical identity documents; all they need to do is show their smartphone’s Yoti app in order to gain access to tickets for “15” or “18” certificate films.
That’s because Yoti’s app is itself a kind of virtual ID. In an initial onboarding process, the app uses facial recognition to match the end user’s selfie image to a photo of their official ID. From there, it can be used not only for identity verification but for age verification without the need to share extraneous identity information such as address or even date of birth – the app can simply confirm whether or not the user is old enough to perform a given transaction.
Commenting on the cinema chains’ embrace of the solution, Yoti CEO Robin Tombs suggested that it caters to a growing demographic trend.
“Young people expect to be able to do everything with their phone and using it to prove their age will come naturally to them,” he said. “It’s a win-win for both cinemas and young cinema-goers.”
For Cineworld’s part, Operations Director Kelly Drew told Metro that the Yoti solution will also help the theater chain to manage changing movie marketing trends. “With an increase in recent years in the number of films classified at ‘15’ but with a broader youth appeal, the issue of proving age is becoming increasingly challenging,” she explained.
The development marks perhaps the biggest win for Yoti in the UK market since the company’s partnership with the UK Post Office last summer. Together, the two organizations developed an app called EasyID that is designed to act as a virtual identity document stored on the user’s smartphone. They went on to launch a physical PASS card designed to enable age verification while sharing a minimum of personally identifiable information, and to offer compatibility with the Yoti or EasyID digital ID platforms.
UK moviegoers who want to take advantage of the new smartphone-based age verification solution can do so by enrolling on either the Yoti app or the EasyID app, and they can proceed to use the app across interactions with a number of other organizations including the National Health Service and Virgin Atlantic.
Source: Metro
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