Age checks for nightlife and festivals

Nightlife and festivals go wrong when the first time you see a passport is in a crowd. The guest who prepared is stuck behind the guest who is still finding it. Age checks for this world belong on the signup and the ticket, so people are pre-vetted before they arrive.

Protect Events is aimed at that sale. The guest uses their phone. You set the minimum age for that event. Your team manages the review pipeline. A wider explanation of the age rule is in age verification for events. How it sits with licensing guidelines is in UK licensing and age checks.

A club night

On a club night the failure mode is inconsistency. One person is strict, one is tired, and the argument happens in public. A session with minimum age 18, completed when they bought the ticket, makes the comparison dull. Twenty-four on a UK passport is approved before they leave the house. Seventeen is declined, and they cannot retry their way into a different answer. A document that looks photographed off a screen waits in the review pipeline you manage, instead of becoming a dispute later.

If you want the phone step to carry the club’s name rather than a generic checker, set that in the white-label flow.

A festival

Festivals add a crowd that arrives in a spike. A few things follow.

• Do not leave the document check until the field. Phones are already in every pocket at the moment of purchase. Ask then.
• Keep one pipeline for the event, so your team is reviewing the people who are actually coming, not guessing at an entrance.
• If a promoter’s brand should appear on the guest’s phone, brand the flow. Keep the pipeline plain: age, document, outcome.
• Price the weekend as a weekend. Starter at £9 covers 500 checks, which suits a small event. Growth at £29 covers 2,500 for an event that scales. A single Saturday can be larger than that. Event volume on the pricing page is there for that spike, from about 1p a check. The thinking behind the price is in cheap ID verification in the UK.

What to brief the team

Give the people running the event four lines.

1. Approved means they were pre-vetted. The document’s age met the number for this event.
2. You still control entry. The check is not a bag policy or a behaviour policy.
3. Declined under age stays declined. Do not send them to “try another photo”.
4. Needs review means it is in the pipeline you manage. It does not mean guess, and it does not mean approved.

A sensible first event

Run one ticket type, not the whole programme. Use the 25-check trial if you want the first guests to be real and the invoice to stay at zero. Watch where people stop. If they stop at “find your ID”, the software is not the delay. If they stop because the result never reaches the order, the webhook is the gap. Fix that before you add the next event.