Shufti lands dual leader status in Liminal’s 2026 age assurance indexes

By AI, Created 2:38 PM UTC, May 18, 2026, /AGP/ – Shufti was named a Leader in both of Liminal’s 2026 Age Verification and Age Estimation indexes, with top ratings for market presence and strong scores on strategy and product execution. The recognition comes as Liminal says the age assurance market is being reshaped by fraud pressure, regulatory scrutiny and demand for more scalable, privacy-preserving tools.

Why it matters: - Liminal’s report puts Shufti among a small group of vendors that cleared the bar for leadership in two major age assurance categories. - The ranking matters because buyers are prioritizing scalability, accuracy, compliance alignment and user experience as age checks become more common and more demanding. - Liminal’s research says legacy, static models are losing ground as fraud tactics evolve and regulators raise expectations.

What happened: - Shufti was recognised as a Leader in both the 2026 Liminal Age Verification Index and the 2026 Liminal Age Estimation Index. - Liminal rated Shufti “Exceptional” for Market Presence across both indexes, its highest tier. - In the Age Verification Index, Liminal evaluated 189 vendors and named 17 Leaders. - Shufti scored 64% in Product Execution, above Liminal’s 42% leadership cutoff, and 92% in Strategy. - In the Age Estimation Index, Liminal evaluated 80 vendors and again named 17 Leaders. - Shahid Hanif, Shufti’s chief executive officer, said the recognition reflects “risk-based age assurance that is accurate, scalable, and privacy-preserving by design.”

The details: - Liminal measures vendors across three weighted pillars: Product Execution, Strategy and Market Presence. - The firm says it evaluates scalability, capability coverage, innovation, verification accuracy, fraud resistance and end-customer experience. - Liminal’s report says 62% of the market still relies on static models that do not adapt to new fraud tactics. - Only 4% of the market uses a continuous learning approach, according to the report. - Roughly six in ten practitioners using facial age estimation have triggered internal reviews of their age assurance methods. - Liminal projects a 27% increase in users required to complete a full age verification process over the next two years, with the share rising from 48% to 61%. - The report says 44% of buyers want clearer regulatory guidance and 39% cite insufficient user education. - Liminal found that scalability was the top buying criterion at 93%, followed by accuracy, compliance alignment, internal user experience and pricing at 91% each. - Shufti’s platform combines four methods in one decisioning layer: AI facial age estimation, authoritative database lookups, government ID verification and configurable liveness checks. - Customers can set confidence thresholds, safety buffers around 16+ and 18+ cutoffs, and automatic step-up to higher-assurance methods when an estimate is close to a regulatory boundary. - Age estimation decisions return in sub-second timeframes, and full liveness and deepfake checks typically finish within seconds. - Shufti says privacy-preserving age checks delete end-user data immediately after each decision by default. - Liminal credits Shufti’s in-house identity verification platform and full-stack ownership as operational strengths. - Tom Gadsden, Shufti’s VP product, said the market is shifting to layered, evidence-backed decisions in milliseconds. - Shufti also holds Level 1 and Level 2 certifications for liveness detection, KJM recognition in Germany for serving regulated content and participation in NIST Face Analysis Technology Evaluation, with top-15 placement across multiple Challenge 25 and Child Online Safety metrics. - Internal benchmarking on a 100,000-image dataset spans diverse demographics and tracks performance by race and gender rather than aggregate averages alone. - Outside the report, Shufti also holds iBeta Level 3 certification for single selfie passive liveness detection. - Shufti was one of only 5 of 16 vendors in the 2025 Department of Homeland Security RIVR event with a false match rate below 0.01%. - Liminal’s analyst evaluation highlights privacy-preserving, on-device age estimation that runs locally on the device or in the browser without internet connectivity. - The report says the system transmits no facial data, supports reusable age tokens and is suited to privacy-sensitive jurisdictions. - Liminal says Shufti serves more than 2,000 businesses globally and operates across 240+ countries and territories. - The report cites capacity to handle up to 1 million verification requests per day. - Liminal also points to pricing flexibility, including a free tier, self-service options and volume-based enterprise pricing, with liveness included by default. - Shufti’s deployments span e-commerce, marketplaces, gaming, dating, adult content, pharmaceuticals and regulated retail.

Between the lines: - The report frames age assurance as a market moving away from simple age gates and toward layered systems that can balance speed, compliance and privacy. - Shufti’s dual leadership suggests buyers and analysts are rewarding vendors that can support both low-friction estimation and higher-assurance verification. - The emphasis on privacy-preserving, on-device checks signals growing pressure to reduce data exposure while still meeting regulatory needs.

What’s next: - Shufti is using the Liminal ranking to reinforce its position with regulated customers and other businesses facing tighter age-check requirements. - The company says customers can use its broader age assurance stack to adapt to different jurisdictions and risk levels. - The full 2026 Liminal Index Report is available via Liminal, and Shufti is directing interested users to explore its age assurance features or contact the team.