Age Requirements & Alcohol

Who can use Taptivo

Anyone aged 13 or over can create a Taptivo account and order food and non-alcoholic drinks. There is no separate adults-only sign-up, and most of what Taptivo does is not age-restricted at all.

Age matters for one thing: alcohol. Alcohol is shown and sold only to people confirmed to be old enough under the law of the country the event is held in, which is not necessarily the country you live in. The rest of this page is about how that confirmation works.

Taptivo is rated for adults on the app stores because licensed vendors sell alcohol through it, and store age ratings describe what an app contains rather than who may hold an account.

The minimum age is set by where the event is

The legal drinking age is set by the place the sale happens — not by where you live and not by where Taptivo is based. An event in Auckland is 18 and accepts a Kiwi Access Card; the same app at an event in Denver is 21 and accepts neither. So we resolve the rule from the event’s location and show it to you before you pay.

• New Zealand — 18. Sale and Supply of Alcohol Act 2012. Accepted ID: New Zealand driver licence, passport, Kiwi Access Card (18+ card), HANZ 18+ card.
• Australia — 18. State and Territory liquor licensing. Accepted ID: Australian driver licence, passport, Proof of Age card, Keypass.
• United States — 21. State alcoholic beverage control law. Accepted ID: state driver license, state ID card, passport, military ID.
• Canada — 19. Provincial liquor law. Accepted ID: driver licence, passport, provincial photo ID. (The legal age is 18 in Alberta, Manitoba and Quebec; we hold the higher figure so the check is never laxer than the local rule.)
• United Kingdom — 18. Licensing Act 2003. Accepted ID: photocard driving licence, passport, PASS-accredited card.
• Ireland — 18. Intoxicating Liquor Acts. Accepted ID: driving licence, passport, Garda Age Card.

Anywhere we cannot determine the country, we fall back to 18 and still require a photo ID check. The fallback is deliberately strict: it can refuse a sale, never wave one through.

Where local law prohibits the sale of alcohol, or permits it only under a personal or premises licence that an event stall would not hold, alcohol is not listed or sold at all — at any age, to anyone. That covers Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Brunei, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, the Maldives, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen. A licensed vendor operating somewhere with a genuine local exemption should contact us rather than rely on the app to infer it.

How we verify your age

Age verification is done by Stripe Identity. You photograph a government-issued ID and take a selfie; Stripe confirms the document is genuine and that you are the person on it, then returns your date of birth to us. We compare that date against the minimum age for the event you are ordering from.

• We never see or store your ID images. They are handled and retained by Stripe. We keep the outcome — verified or not — along with your name, date of birth and document type.
• You verify once. After that it applies to every event you order from, with the minimum age re-checked each time against that event’s location.
• If your verified date of birth is below the minimum age for an event, you cannot buy alcohol there. The app tells you the age required and which law it comes from.

What you see before you verify

Listing a drink is advertising it, so we apply the age rule to what is on screen and not only to what can be bought. If you have not verified your age, or your verified age is below the minimum for the event you are looking at, alcohol is not shown to you.

• The Drinks tab still appears and still lists soft drinks, juice, coffee and everything else that is not age-restricted. Food is never affected.
• In place of the alcohol you see a short note explaining the minimum age at that event and the law it comes from — and, if you simply have not verified yet, a button to do it.
• Age-restricted items are also left out of search results and of a vendor’s own menu, so nothing routes around the rule.

Your ID is checked again in person

Verifying online proves who holds the account. It cannot prove who is standing there when the drink is handed over, and that is the moment the law cares about. So alcohol orders carry a second check: the runner delivering, or the vendor handing over at the counter, asks to see your physical ID and records the result before the order can be completed.

An order that fails that check is not handed over. Have your ID with you — the same document you verified with is the safest choice.

For vendors

Only vendors we have approved as licensed may list alcohol, and a vendor’s own identity is verified before they can trade at all. Vendors and runners are responsible for carrying out the in-person ID check and for refusing service where the law requires it. Selling alcohol to a person under the legal age is an offence for the licensee, not only for the platform.

Questions

If something here is unclear, or you think an age check has gone wrong, email us at support@taptivo.io.