Kalshi is rolling out a suite of new protections to keep minors off its prediction market platform, even as the company pushes back against pressure to raise the minimum trading age to 21.
The moves come as prediction markets explode in popularity and attract regulatory scrutiny. A July survey by Common Sense Media found that 36% of boys ages 11 to 17 reported gambling in the past year, with nearly half of 17-year-olds saying they participated.
CEO Tarek Mansour said the platform is implementing facial recognition technology at login to prevent minors from using family accounts. The company will also request selfies from users flagged as higher risk, deploy mandatory two-factor authentication, and introduce a monitoring tool that alerts account holders when someone else logs in with their credentials.
Kalshi is also rolling out a feature called Inner Circle, which lets users share trading activity with friends and family, including parents. The company plans to suggest deposit limits to individual traders showing signs of excessive activity, and in some cases will ask for proof of funds.
"We're essentially proactively doing that before we're required to do them because we think a lot of these measures are the right thing to do," Mansour told Axios. "The goal for Kalshi here is we want to set a new state-of-the-art benchmark when it comes to customer protection."
The announcement comes as lawmakers and professional sports leagues intensify pressure on prediction market operators. Last week, the NBA and PGA Tour called for the minimum trading age to be raised to 21, matching most state regulations for traditional sportsbooks and casinos.
In a letter to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, NBA executive VP Dan Spillane wrote that "trading in sports prediction contracts carries material risks of financial loss that may be particularly acute for younger individuals."
That same week, Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Dave McCormick introduced legislation requiring prediction markets to implement self-exclusion programs and mandatory age verification.
Mansour has repeatedly resisted the 21-age threshold, arguing that prediction market trading differs fundamentally from traditional gambling because users trade with each other rather than against the house. He contends that prediction markets should be treated like equities trading, where the minimum age is 18.
"They should be treated the same," Mansour said.
The broader concern centers on what Jonathan Cohen, policy lead at the American Institute for Boys and Men, calls "the new frontier" in sports gambling harm. Young men represent a disproportionate share of those experiencing negative outcomes from gambling activities.
Sports gambling analyst Dustin Gouker called the leagues' push for higher age minimums "an interesting and worthwhile proposal," though he acknowledged that prediction markets appear poised to remain a fixture in the sports ecosystem.
Author James Rodriguez: "Kalshi's safeguards are steps in the right direction, but the company's refusal to budge on the age floor suggests the real battle over these platforms is still ahead."
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