The BBC has asked three of the UK's biggest banks whether they would have a process for assisting with social media requests for age verification if it did become an official measure.

What a fucking dumbass comment here by the BBC. Using card transactions for age verification was literally written into the law!! The law only vaguely defined facial recognition and ID scanning, because the technology didn't really exist yet, but explicitly mentions card transactions.

Hell, I'm convinced that was the main reason behind the law. MasterCard and VISA want more businesses to authenticate transactions, at a time when they're increasingly choosing not to to save money on their fee.