Top Takeaways:
- BAT Italy is piloting Yoti’s facial age-estimation technology across 119 pop-up stores.
- The system provides a binary age check without storing biometric or facial data.
- The pilot aims to strengthen underage-sales prevention alongside existing ID checks.
British American Tobacco Italia has announced a partnership with Yoti to pilot a facial age-estimation system designed to strengthen underage sales prevention for tobacco and nicotine products in Italy, according to reporting by Comunicati-Stampa.
The pilot is being rolled out across 119 BAT-branded pop-up stores nationwide, where the technology serves as an additional safeguard alongside existing age-verification measures.
The system uses facial scanning technology to estimate whether a customer is at least 18 years old, the legal purchasing age in Italy. According to BAT Italy and Yoti, the technology does not identify individuals, store facial images, or retain biometric data. Instead, it produces a simple binary result indicating whether the individual is likely “of age” or “not of age,” consistent with European data-protection requirements, including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
BAT Italy said the initiative is part of its broader responsible sales and youth-access prevention strategy and is intended to complement — not replace — traditional ID checks where required by law. The company said the goal is to reduce the risk of underage access by introducing an additional, technology-based control at the point of sale.
Yoti’s facial age-estimation technology has been deployed in other regulated consumer settings globally, including alcohol retail and online age-restricted services. According to publicly available information cited in the Italian coverage, similar pilots have previously been conducted in other European markets, including Croatia.
In those trials, the technology reportedly achieved age-assessment accuracy of up to 99%, significantly reducing attempts by minors to purchase age-restricted products. Those performance figures are attributed to pilot-program results cited by the companies involved.
BAT Italy said the Italian pilot is focused on assessing how digital age-estimation tools can support compliance in real-world retail environments, particularly in temporary or high-traffic locations, such as pop-up stores, where traditional age-verification processes may be more difficult to enforce consistently.
The company emphasized that the technology is designed to operate within existing legal frameworks and privacy standards, and that customer participation is limited to age estimation only, without identity verification or data retention.
BAT has previously stated at the group level that it supports using technology to prevent youth access to tobacco and nicotine products while continuing to sell its products exclusively to adult consumers. The Italian pilot reflects a broader industry trend toward exploring digital tools to strengthen age-verification practices amid growing regulatory scrutiny across Europe.
Neither BAT Italy nor Yoti disclosed a timeline for expanding the pilot beyond the current 119 locations or for whether the technology would be adopted permanently after the evaluation phase.
