• Liquid Avatar (LQID) is partnering with the Ontario Convenience Stores Association (OCSA) to develop a digital age verification program
  • Digital verification tools and services will be critical to the convenience store industry as it looks to expand the sale of age-restricted products
  • Age-restricted products include single sports betting and other lottery products, along with future opportunities selling alcohol-based beverages
  • Liquid Avatar Technologies empowers users to control and benefit from the use of their online identity
  • Liquid Avatar Technologies Inc. (LQID) is currently trading at C$0.06 per share

Liquid Avatar (LQID) is partnering with the Ontario Convenience Stores Association (OCSA) to develop a digital age verification program.

With daily foot traffic of over 3 million people, the opportunity to use digital verification tools and services to improve the customer and vendor experience is critical to the convenience store industry as it looks to expand the sale of age-restricted products.

These age-restricted products include single sport betting and other lottery products, future opportunities with alcohol-based beverages, and other emerging categories.

The Smart Age program will consist of awareness campaigns, digital verification review at the point of purchase and integration into existing point-of-sale and payment terminals.

No personally identifiable information will be exchanged with the vendor.

The OCSA and Liquid Avatar Technologies are establishing a working group to develop best practices to bring the product to convenience stores. The program will be available as both a SaaS monthly subscription and as a pay-as-you-go verification model.

While lottery sales are only one of several age-restricted sales categories available in convenience stores today, failure to always comply with verification can lead to enforcement violations for the sale of future age-restricted products and include fines and loss of the ability to sell age-restricted products. As the industry looks to future opportunities to increase sales of age-restricted products, transparency and enhanced verification tools will become increasingly important.

Dave Bryans, CEO of the OCSA commented on the partnership.

“The OCSA wholly supports the need for verification for the sale of age-restricted products and is working with the industry to achieve a 100% success rate. Together with Liquid Avatar, our goal is to implement the Smart Age solution in over 8,000 c-stores across the province and leverage easy-to-use technology to better protect families in their respective communities.

We believe this digital solution will help our sector modernize and further enhance the trust that c-stores have already established in their own neighbourhoods.”

Liquid Avatar Technologies has developed the Liquid Avatar Verifiable Credential Ecosystem (LAVCE) and a digital wallet that supports digital credentials for age verification. As this program becomes available in Canada, Liquid Avatar Technologies will be one of the first to provide true blockchain-enabled, W3C compliant, digital identity-verified age verification solutions for all parts of the digital identity ecosystem for governments, convenience stores and other businesses. The LAVCE platform allows users to leverage government-issued digital IDs to verify who they are.

The Ontario government recently announced its intention to issue digital government ID credentials and Liquid Avatar Technologies believes that it aligns with the current requirements and the projected roadmap technologies and standards of Ontario’s programs.

David Lucatch, CEO of Liquid Avatar Technologies commented on the opportunity.

“We are very excited to have formalized this partnership with the OCSA. The LAVCE platform together with the Liquid Avatar digital wallet is perfect for age-verification functions for small businesses. C-stores sell more age-restricted products than any other retail setting and are provided with the least number of resources. We know that our modern and cost-efficient tool will give confidence to these operators that not only is the patron who they claim to be, but that they are, indeed, of age.”

The agreement between Liquid Avatar Technologies and the OCSA will allow the two organizations to work together on providing a customized digital age-verification solution that conforms to the unique needs of all convenience stores across Ontario.

The organizations have agreed to create the Smart Age program utilizing Liquid Avatar’s LAVCE platform to provide the capability for the OCSA and all convenience stores in Ontario to have a digital verification solution for age verification. This program may expand to other regions both in Canada and elsewhere and to other business verticals including restaurants, bars, hotels, and events.

The OCSA is a not-for-profit provincial association. Membership includes the majority of regional chain store operators, oil companies and other key suppliers in the industry.

Liquid Avatar Technologies focuses on the verification, management and monetization of Self Sovereign Identity, empowering users to control and benefit from the use of their online identity.

Liquid Avatar Technologies Inc. (LQID) is currently trading at C$0.06 per share.

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