"Credit cards are not documents. Many people don’t have them. Apple don’t provide any other way to verify your age because they are a stupid American company with American values in which you’re just as human as your credit score.
Age verification is a scam, but checking it with a credit card is even worse."
I can dimly remember when a "major credit card" was considered a valid form of ID in the USA. It's been about 40 years.
Nowadays you're often asked for a foto ID when using a credit card, and some people actually have cards with their fotos on them.
@publius in the first decade of 2000 I had a Deutsche Bahn (train) “Bahncard” with which I could get 1st class tickets at 50%. It wasn’t in any way any official document. That card had my photo on it (though I don’t think they do that any longer).
Whilst in the U.S. renting a car, roughly in 2010, I was asked for “a photo ID” and I presented my Bahncard. I got the car.
One of my favorite anecdotes. :-). #trueStory
Last fall I was in Britain for a while, and I could not use my passport as ID at the train stations. Instead I had to obtain a "National Rail Photocard", which meant running off to a fotobooth, coming back with the strip of pictures, letting the clerk snip one off and stick it onto a self-laminating card with my name written in pen.
I had a very strong impulse to find out if I could swipe some of the blanks. Seriously, this is the sketchiest quasi-government foto ID ever seen.
JP Mens
publius