State guide

Florida ID scanning law: age checks and scanned data

By Apparent Logic, LLC · Updated October 5, 2026
Legal sources checked October 5, 2026 · How we review sources

General information, not legal advice. Laws and permit conditions vary; ask your lawyer or regulator what applies. Check ID is a tool for your staff, not a guarantee of compliance or a legal defense. No system can catch every fake ID. Staff must inspect the document and its holder and make the final decision.

Can a Florida business scan a driver’s license to check age? Florida Statutes §322.143 permits scanning for specified purposes, including age-restricted goods or services. Permission to read a card is not permission to keep or share its personal information.

At a glance

Age verification is one of the purposes listed in §322.143(2).
For scans under the age/identity-check provisions, subsection (3) prohibits storing, selling or sharing the defined personal information.
The law has a separate consent provision with disclosure and manual-collection protections. Do not assume that a scanner notice or app subscription supplies that consent.

What counts as scanned personal information?

§322.143 defines personal information as the individual’s name, address, birth date, driver-license number or identification-card number. Its definition of swiping includes devices that decode a magnetic strip or barcode. A camera barcode read raises the same practical question about which information is read, kept and transmitted; it is not safe to assume the rule concerns only magnetic-strip readers.

Subsection (2) lists purposes for reading a card, including age-restricted goods or services in (2)(b). Subsection (3) prohibits storing, selling or sharing the defined personal information collected under the identity- and age-check provisions, (2)(a) and (2)(b). Other listed purposes have different conditions; this guide focuses on ordinary age checks.

Under subsection (6), a person can consent to collection and storage after the business tells them what will be collected and why. The statute provides a manual-collection alternative, and subsection (7) protects the choice to decline scanning for collection while allowing manual collection.

Do not treat consent as a blanket exception to every privacy or alcohol rule. Ask counsel whether your proposed collection, disclosures, alternatives and service-provider use fit the statute. A patron-facing sign, a staff PIN or a “Verified” result is not proof that those requirements have been met.

What about alcohol service?

§562.11(1)(a) prohibits selling, giving or serving alcohol to someone under 21, or allowing underage consumption on licensed premises. A readable barcode is not proof of age, authenticity or the holder’s identity; staff still compare the document with the person.

Before choosing equipment, establish the accepted documents and staff procedure with your regulator or lawyer. Include unreadable barcodes, unsupported documents and a photo mismatch in training. This guide does not establish that scanning is mandatory for every Florida alcohol sale or that any app supplies a statutory defense.

Where Check ID fits

On iPhone and iPad, Check ID reads supported US and Canadian license and ID-card barcodes and compares the encoded birth and expiry dates with your configured rules. A “Verified” barcode result means the information passed those checks; it does not prove that the card is genuine or belongs to the holder. A fake can encode plausible information.

Scan history does not store the scanned person’s name, birth date, address, document number or an ID photo. Records can include the outcome, age in whole years, issuing jurisdiction, document type and scan time. Teams adds venue, device and operator attribution when available. Teams keeps records on our servers for two years by default; Free and Pro history covers seven days on the device or in your iCloud.

Repeat-entry codes, guest lists and product analytics have separate handling. See Security and data for the details and How verification works for supported checks and limitations. Data minimization does not establish that the app’s storage or sharing fits a particular law.

Check ID’s scan-history fields omit the personal information listed above, but that does not certify compliance with §322.143. Specifically review one-way repeat-entry codes, independently entered guest-list names, product analytics and any cloud transmissions. A code derived from an ID is not automatically outside a legal data restriction.

Questions to settle before enabling records

Which data is only displayed during the check, and which data is stored locally or sent to a service?
Are you using the age-check permission, a legal-recordkeeping provision or a consent workflow? What does each allow?
Which guest-list or customer information is independently entered, and what rules apply to it?
What retention period and staff access should your business use? The Teams default is a product setting, not a legal recommendation.

Sources and review scope

Frequently asked questions

Can Florida bars scan an ID to check age?

§322.143(2)(b) permits reading a license or ID card for age-restricted goods or services. Its data-use restrictions remain important, and a scan does not establish document authenticity.

Can I save a patron’s name and birth date from an age-check scan?

§322.143(3) prohibits storing, selling or sharing the defined personal information collected under (2)(a) or (2)(b). Subsection (6) has a separate consent route with disclosures and manual alternatives; ask counsel before relying on it.

Does Check ID guarantee compliance with Florida’s scanning law?

No. Review its displayed information, stored scan facts, repeat-entry codes, guest lists and transmissions with counsel. Omitting names and birth dates from scan history is useful data minimization, not a legal certification.

Will Check ID catch every fake ID?

No system can catch every fake ID. A fake barcode can contain plausible dates. Staff must inspect the physical document and compare its holder, even when the app’s checks pass.