How can I add an age verification step at checkout for my online alcohol store?

Store Design

Topic summary

An Australian alcohol retailer needs to implement date-of-birth verification at checkout to comply with liquor licensing laws, which require age verification at the point of sale agreement (checkout), not just a pop-up warning.

Available Solutions:

  • Shopify Plus: Allows editing checkout.liquid to add custom age verification, but costs ~$2000 USD/month—prohibitively expensive for small businesses
  • Third-party apps: Multiple age verification apps exist in the Shopify App Store, but most only offer pop-ups rather than checkout integration
  • Workarounds: Suggestions include repurposing the “company name” field at checkout to collect birth dates, though this doesn’t enforce proper date formatting

Recent Developments:

Shopify Checkout Extensibility now enables app blocks that can be added to checkout without Shopify Plus. One solution mentioned verifies government-issued IDs (including AU/NZ licenses and passports) and can apply minimum age restrictions with white-label customization.

Key Challenge:

Compliance requires not just verification but also storing age data with purchase records. Many existing solutions fail to meet regulatory requirements for age-restricted products (alcohol, tobacco, vaping), leaving small businesses struggling to find affordable, legally compliant options without upgrading to expensive enterprise plans.

Summarized with AI on November 6. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
10

Hey Sam -

Yes, the plugin about 80% of the way there and at this point there are two options: 1) sign up for the beta which is coming soon, or 2) in the meantime we do have a version of the product that can be used today and puts you on the priority list for the beta rollout. The 2nd option is not yet fully integrated but it’s easy to use, cuts down massively (80%+) on manual labor for the backend team related to collection, storage and compliance. Beyond this some of our customers use it to combat fraud on Shopify. We realize that’s not as sexy but it does get the job done, it’s a bit less expensive and gives you full control of the process. If your volume is < 100 orders per day it’s something that your backend staff can easily pickup today.

Definitely drop us a line if you’d like to chat or see a demo.

Best,
-Darrin (darrin.edelman@tokenoftrust.com)