At a liquor store, bar, or casino, getting carded is part of the cost of entry. Now the Internet is carding people, too – and the companies doing the carding are cashing in. New laws and platform rules are pushing games, social platforms, AI products, and adult sites to replace birthday boxes (the fields where you enter your date of birth) with identity checks. What was once a compliance tool for sellers in age-restricted industries is becoming infrastructure for the Internet, and a growth market for the companies supplying it. Socure, a Nevada-based identity-verification company founded in 2012, says it now generates more than US$340mil (RM1.39bil) in annual recurring revenue from over 3,000 customers. New ARR (annual recurring revenue) grew 62% year over year, and age verification is among its fastest-growing product lines. The roughly 500-person company has raised approximately US$646mil (RM2.64bil) in private funding. London-based Yoti, founded in 2014 by Robin Tombs, 57, and Noel Hayden, 55, says it has completed more than one billion age checks for roughly half a billion people. Its revenue rose 62% in 2025 and reached roughly US$43mil (RM175.91mil) in the year ended March 2026. And San Francisco identity startup Persona, founded in 2018 by Rick Song, 35, and Charles Yeh, 33, raised US$200mil (RM818.20mil) at a US$2bil (RM8.18bil) valuation in April 2025. The roughly 700-person company has raised about US$418mil (RM1.71bil) to date, and its annual recurring revenue surpassed US$100mil (RM409.10mil) in 2025, according to a Forbes estimate. Age assurance is one use-case within its broader identity-verification business; Persona works with businesses including Roblox, OpenAI, Coursera, and Lime. All three are benefiting from the same shift: Businesses increasingly need to know not just who a user is, but how old they are and which parts of their platform they should be allowed to