Twenty years is a long time in any industry.
In identity verification and age assurance, it is a lifetime.
Because the internet does not stand still. Fraud adapts. Devices change. Regulations evolve. Customer expectations move from “good enough” to “instant and seamless.” And every year, the cost of getting identity wrong gets higher.
This February, we are celebrating our 20th anniversary at Veratad. It is a milestone for the company, but it is also something more personal. This work has shaped a huge part of my life, and it has shaped a team that has spent two decades doing something that is not always visible to the end user, but is critical to the businesses that rely on it.
This is the story of how we got here, what we learned along the way, and why the next decade matters even more than the last.
We started with nothing but the belief that trust would matter
Twenty years ago, we did not have a platform.
We did not have a team.
We did not have a brand that meant anything to anyone.
We had an idea and a problem that felt obvious even back then.
The internet was growing fast, and businesses were moving online. But trust was still treated like an afterthought. You could build a great product, run great marketing, and still lose everything if you could not answer the simplest questions:
Who is this person?
Are they real?
Are they the right age?
Are we exposing ourselves to unnecessary risk?
At the beginning, the work was simple in the hardest way.
Build something useful.
Get a customer.
Make it work in the real world.
Fix what breaks.
Repeat.
Not glamorous. Not viral. Not the kind of work that gets applause. But the kind that compounds over time.
And in a space like identity, compounding is everything.
Trust is not a tagline. It is what happens on the hardest days
There is a version of identity verification that looks great in a demo.
Then there is identity verification in production.
Production is where edge cases show up. It is where fraud spikes. It is where policy changes land at the worst possible time. It is where a “small issue” becomes a support ticket, becomes a customer escalation, becomes a real risk.
Over the last two decades, we have learned that trust is not what you say about your product. Trust is what your customers experience when things get messy.
It is accuracy when the inputs are imperfect.
It is stability when volume spikes.
It is consistency when the threat landscape changes.
It is a smooth user experience without lowering the bar.
And it is the discipline to keep improving when nobody is watching.
That is the work.
The internet changed. The job stayed the same
If you look back over 20 years, you can draw the history of digital trust through a few clear shifts.
Shift 1: Online grew up
Identity checks went from “nice to have” to essential. More industries moved online, and verification became part of the standard workflow, not an exception.
Shift 2: Fraud became a business model
Fraud stopped being occasional and became organized. It evolved into a system, with real incentives, real tooling, and constant experimentation.
Shift 3: Expectations went up
People expect onboarding to be fast. They also expect it to be safe. The gap between “secure” and “frictionless” is where real product decisions live.
Shift 4: Regulation got more serious
Compliance became more complex, more global, and more important to get right. And many businesses realized they needed partners who could stay steady as requirements kept changing.
Through every shift, the job stayed the same.
Help businesses establish trust online.
Verify identity.
Confirm age.
Reduce fraud.
Support compliance.
Protect customers.
What changed was the scale, the complexity, and the cost of failure.
What we built, and why it matters
Over time, our platform grew into the system businesses rely on for the parts of trust that cannot be improvised.
Today, we support the core building blocks teams need to operate safely online, including:
- Identity verification
- Age verification and age assurance
- Business verification
- Fraud prevention
- Regulatory compliance support
- Data validation
- Customer onboarding workflows
If you are not in this space, that list might sound technical.
In practice, it means something simple.
It means businesses can onboard real users with confidence.
It means they can reduce risk without creating a terrible customer experience.
It means they can run their growth and operations knowing they have a foundation they can trust.
And it means that when conditions change, they are not starting from scratch.
The part people do not see: the years of learning the hard way
A 20-year platform is not built by one breakthrough.
It is built by thousands of small decisions made under pressure.
- The moments when you realize an edge case is not an edge case anymore.
- The moments when a workflow that worked yesterday needs to work on a new device today.
- The moments when volume spikes, and “mostly stable” is not acceptable.
- The moments when customers need answers fast, and your systems need to be reliable, not just clever.
You do not get to fake your way through those.
You either become dependable, or you lose trust.
Over time, those moments shape a company. They shape a culture. They shape the way you think about product quality, security, and responsibility.
That is what the last two decades have taught us.
Why the 20th anniversary matters now
This milestone is not just about looking back. It is about timing.
The next decade of identity and age assurance is going to be defined by the collision of three forces:
1: AI will change the rules
AI will improve capabilities across verification, risk analysis, and fraud detection. It will also raise the bar for attackers. Fraud will get faster, cheaper, and more adaptive.
2: Digital trust will become more visible
Age assurance is becoming a frontline issue across industries. Businesses are under increasing pressure to protect minors, reduce harm, and prove compliance.
3: Customer experience expectations will keep rising
People do not want more steps. They want fewer steps. They want confidence without friction. That means the future belongs to systems that are accurate, fast, and designed for real-world usability.
This is why we care so much about the next chapter.
Not because it is trendy, but because it is necessary.
The next chapter: building with AI, staying anchored in trust
We are actively using AI across identity verification and age assurance, and we are doing it with the same mindset that got us here.
Not chasing hype.
Not promising magic.
Not making trust feel like marketing.
Using AI where it helps, and designing for outcomes that hold up in production.
The goal is still the same:
Make it easier for good users to get through.
Make it harder for bad actors to slip through.
Help businesses meet requirements without turning onboarding into a pain.
Keep raising the standard as the world changes.
A quick thank you
Anniversaries are ultimately about people.
The customers who trusted us early, when we were smaller and less proven.
The partners who worked with us as the industry evolved.
The team members who showed up, solved hard problems, and kept raising the bar.
This milestone belongs to all of them.
And if you have been part of this journey in any way, thank you.
What comes next
Twenty years is a meaningful milestone.
But the work is not finished.
Digital trust is becoming more important, not less. Age assurance is becoming more central, not peripheral. Fraud is becoming more sophisticated, not simpler.
That is the world we are building for.
Here is to 20 years of building trust online.
And to the decade ahead.
