In an opinion piece published in Avisen Danmark, leading players in the Danish grocery trade – Coop Denmark, Salling Group and De Samvirkende Købmænd – are demanding automated digital age verification for the sale of alcohol, tobacco and nicotine. The goal is to shift responsibility from store staff to technology through a system where payment is automatically refused if the customer does not meet the age requirements.
Today, young cashiers bear the responsibility of assessing customers' ages and enforcing the rules. This too often leads to errors, conflicts and awkward situations, write the Danish trade representatives.
This issue is also receiving attention in Sweden. Markus Lindblad, Head of Legal & External Affairs at Haypp Group, comments on the Danish debate in an article in Dagligvarunytt. He notes that the physical retail system today largely relies on manual assessments. Haypp Group, which operates e-commerce platforms such as Snusbolaget.se, Snuslageret.no and Northerner.com, points out that e-commerce, in contrast to physical retail, already has functioning processes in place.
In e-commerce, age verification is integrated into the very infrastructure for payment, identification and delivery.
The question therefore is not whether retail needs to digitize its age verifications, but why development within physical retail is still lagging behind, writes Markus Lindblad in Dagligvarunytt.
Data on how underage individuals obtain age-restricted products shows a clear difference between sales channels. According to Snusrapporten 2026, only 3 percent of underage users state that they purchased the products online. This compares to 51 percent who report having shopped at local kiosks.
The low proportion of digital purchases among minors can be attributed to e-commerce age verification systems. As previously highlighted, a double age verification often occurs online – both at the time of purchase and in connection with delivery. Lindblad has previously stated that the debate about young people's access to age-restricted products is often directed towards digital commerce, despite industry statistics showing that e-commerce currently does the most to ensure that age limits are complied with.