Before founding VerifyMy, Ryan Shaw was simply looking for an age verification solution for his previous business. The ones he found, however, were too expensive, too difficult to integrate with, or failed to take into account the needs of either the businesses implementing them or the end users who would be required to interact with them.
This led Shaw to found VerifyMy, with the goal of streamlining the age assurance process for adults while preventing children from accessing age-restricted content, products or services in ways that support compliance with card brand requirements.
We are the only single-source provider to meet card brand requirements and the only provider we know of that can monitor livestream content in real time.
Meanwhile, with user-generated content platforms facing a growing number of trust and safety risks, VerifyMy also aims to fulfill the need for robust compliance and safeguarding on such platforms, with end-to-end identity verification and content moderation capabilities.
In this company profile, VerifyMy details how the company strives to live up to its founding principles: providing accurate, robust, low-friction solutions that preserve privacy and are inclusive without bias.
XBIZ: What are a few of the biggest milestones VerifyMy has achieved since its inception?
VERIFYMY: Since its founding in 2019, VerifyMy’s solutions have evolved rapidly in response to the fast-changing online and regulatory environment, including the EU’s Digital Services Act and the U.K.’s Online Safety Act. In 2022, Google for Startups selected VerifyMy as a recipient of its Black Founders Fund in Europe. We are the exclusive global provider of age verification for eBay. Our solutions are deployed globally by organizations in a wide range of sectors, including social media, online video gaming, ecommerce and pornography.
In addition, we are the only single-source provider to meet card brand requirements and the only provider we know of that can monitor livestream content in real time. We are the exclusive provider of email address age estimation: a highly accurate, privacy-preserving, fully inclusive, frictionless method that is now deployed by some of the world’s biggest adult and tech platforms and has been embraced by over 400 adult businesses since its launch.
XBIZ: How has the age assurance industry evolved over the years?
VERIFYMY: The rapid growth of the internet in the early nineties meant the need for age checks naturally expanded into the online world as platforms offering age-restricted products or services or those hosting sensitive content, such as pornography, required a means of identifying whether an online user was of an appropriate age.
Recent years have seen a huge expansion of the market, from alcohol and vaping to some of the world’s biggest industries, including social media, pornography, online video gaming and streaming apps. This evolution has resulted in a dramatic shift from traditional, manual submission of identity documents to the adoption of automated, frictionless and sophisticated behavior- and AI-driven techniques.
Today, age assurance in the adult sector is critical to ensuring legal compliance, safeguarding minors from inappropriate content and protecting the privacy of adults wishing to view adult content — and there is a huge range of methods available to the market. Safety tech providers now offer a range of highly accurate, inclusive, privacy-preserving and frictionless age assurance methods that protect user privacy, enhance user experience and ensure compliance with ever-evolving regulations.
XBIZ: In what ways has VerifyMy seized on these trends to address market needs?
VERIFYMY: We continually innovate, building solutions with our founding principles at the heart of everything we do. This has improved accuracy and helped ensure solutions that have minimal friction and are inclusive and available to everyone. We incorporate privacy by design and data minimization in everything we do, doubling down on solutions that deliver for both platforms and end users. That has included increasing our use of proprietary AI and decision-making logic.
The challenge for sites looking to protect their business lies in implementing age assurance methods that are both effective and provide a seamless user experience. Traditional age verification methods often involve significant friction, which historically has reduced revenue for sites and deterred users, often leading them to seek less reputable alternatives where no methods are in place.
Where regulation mandates age verification, a low-friction option is vital to support the industry. As an age assurance provider, we recognize the need for minimal friction in age assurance and provide innovative user behavior-led and AI-led age estimation techniques to achieve this. For example, our proprietary age estimation solution, which uses just an email address to accurately determine the ages of users, can work seamlessly in the background with no user interaction required.
When age assurance is implemented correctly, adult sites can reduce friction, vastly improve user experience and reduce drop-off rates. Additionally, we emphasize user choice. We don’t believe there is a single age assurance method suitable for everyone; what might be one person’s preference might not be possible for another individual, or they might not feel comfortable providing the required information.
XBIZ: Tell us a bit about the team behind VerifyMy and how you all work together to achieve the company’s goals.
VERIFYMY: Led by Ryan Shaw, founder and CEO, our global team of talented professionals has extensive experience across online safety and a variety of highly regulated sectors. We are made up of a large team of highly skilled developers, a dedicated onboarding and customer success team, and our regulatory affairs and legal team, who work to ensure our solutions are in line with all legislative and data privacy requirements. Additionally, our talented designers and product experts work together to ensure our products work perfectly for our customers and their users.
Gavin Worrall, our VP of global partnerships, leads our adult industry strategy. He connects industry needs to our product and tech teams to ensure we design solutions with maximum impact. First and foremost, Gavin is passionate about safeguarding, but he also brings a robust set of skills to perfecting the balance between maximizing clients’ revenues and ensuring brand protection.
Nicoletta Stefanucci Giulii is our talented business development executive. With a keen focus on building stronger networks across multiple markets within the adult sector, she brings a partnership-driven approach to her work, prioritizing the protection of both conversion rates and clients’ reputations. Working closely with clients, she drives the full optimization of our tech to align perfectly with customer requirements, delivering tailored solutions that foster long-term success and growth.
Walt MacNee was the president of international markets at Mastercard from 2008 to 2011, and was responsible for the company’s business in over 200 countries. He became a non-executive director of VerifyMy in October 2023, and has been determinedly leveraging his experience and network to break the inertia and drive change.
Michael Klein is a strategic advisor who provides invaluable support and direction to the business. He has been a leading executive in the entertainment industry for over 30 years, from being a top programming executive at companies like iN Demand, Showtime, On Command Video, Vubiquity and Playboy, to heading up companies as president of LFP Inc. and Vivid Entertainment. Michael works closely with Gavin on strategy, and you will often see them together swinging a golf club.
XBIZ: What other groups and organizations do you work with to solve compliance challenges together?
VERIFYMY: We partner with industry experts, nonprofits and world leaders in online safety, finance and technology to drive and elevate market standards. We also have working partnerships with regulators and legislators globally, ensuring our solutions meet the exacting and ever-evolving requirements of the adult sector. Some of the partners we work with include WeProtect Global Alliance, ASACP, Pineapple Support, Visualsoft, MIDS, CCBill, Age Check Certification Scheme and the Online Dating and Discovery Association.
XBIZ: Discuss the newest features that VerifyMy has developed to provide optimized age verification and estimation.
VERIFYMY: VerifyMy’s latest proprietary age assurance solution, age estimation using email address, leverages just an email address to accurately determine a user’s age. This method is frictionless, highly accurate, privacy-preserving, inclusive and robust. It is the quickest and easiest way to determine the age of your users online, and can be implemented seamlessly in the background with no user interaction required or disruption to the user journey. Only a binary yes/no response is provided to a replying platform; no further information is shared, ensuring an individual’s privacy is fully protected.
This method is also fair, usable by everyone irrespective of gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality or any other trait, and works without discernible bias. Since almost 100% of online users have an active email address that they commonly share online on a daily basis for account creation or login purposes, sharing an email address is a very natural behavior for many. The solution does not require physical documents, which not all users may have, or biometric data that some may not be comfortable sharing.
XBIZ: And how does VerifyMyContent provide authentication, content moderation and complaint management for user-generated content platforms?
VERIFYMY: In the realm of content moderation, our industry-leading proprietary tech is the driving force behind VerifyMy’s second solution, which incorporates identity verification, AI and human content moderation, complaints resolution and consent management. It is designed to prevent illegal content from being uploaded onto user-generated content platforms.
The solution consists of a comprehensive and versatile range of features designed to solve user-generated content platforms’ unique safeguarding and compliance challenges. These features include content provider and participant verification, content moderation, livestreaming moderation, complaint resolution, monthly reporting, quality control and content review.
Utilizing a combination of AI and human moderators, VerifyMyContent allows uploaders to get their content online fast, and enables platforms to safeguard their users and revenue. One core feature is ongoing consent management, enabling identity and consent verification of content participants. Average participant consent verification in the industry takes three to four days, but our unique set of processes reduces that to hours.
XBIZ: What are VerifyMy’s long-term goals as a company?
VERIFYMY: We will continue to build on our solutions so we can offer the broadest range of solutions on the market. By regularly enhancing the capabilities of our age assurance and content moderation technologies and discovering new ways to utilize AI at scale, VerifyMy will work toward a world that ensures kids remain safe when venturing online. We consistently aim to help our customers in the adult sector with their compliance needs, leaving them to focus on what they do best: building great websites full of brilliant, commercially successful content.
