Share 
State of Play’s TL;DR
- Kalshi is rolling out selfie checks, mandatory Face ID, and a parental portal to stop minors using family IDs to trade.
- These changes aim to close a practical loophole that let under-18 users access the platform and raise the bar for verification across prediction markets.
Kalshi found that determined minors were bypassing its standard KYC by submitting parents’ or older relatives’ government IDs during onboarding. The prediction market company says the ID checks themselves weren’t failing – the human workaround was.
CEO Tarek Mansour announced a layered response:
- Live selfie-to-ID matching
- Default Face ID where devices support it
- Mandatory two-factor authentication
Mansour put it bluntly:
“If the face logging in does not match the verified ID holder, the account flags.”
To promote responsible gambling, Kalshi also launched an account portal that lets parents check whether their ID was used without permission and rolled out a view-only “Inner Circle” sharing option for users who want family transparency without account access.
Moves should calm some criticisms
The immediate effect should be fewer underage accounts, reducing both legal risk and potential reputational hits for the platform. Minors who previously traded using family IDs will see those paths closed. Adult users will encounter additional friction during login – primarily device-based Face ID and live selfie checks.
Operators face modest compliance costs to implement and maintain biometric and two-factor systems, but these investments may pre-empt tougher regulation and restore public confidence.
From a market perspective, cleaner age enforcement could calm calls for raising minimum trading ages, while privacy-conscious users and civil-liberties advocates may scrutinize biometric practices. Competitors will likely feel pressure to match Kalshi’s measures or risk being painted as less responsible.
Based on reporting by Parker Loverich for Si.com.
