Kalshi said it is adding new account controls as the prediction market platform faces closer attention over underage access and user safeguards.
Speaking at Semafor World Economy in Washington on Wednesday, co-founder and CEO Tarek Mansour said the company is preparing a parent portal, selfie-based identity checks, and family account tools to stop minors from using accounts that do not belong to them.
Kalshi’s own help center says users must be 18 or older to open an account and may need to pass document verification during sign-up.
Mansour’s comments showed that the company is now trying to address a specific problem: minors using a parent’s identification to get through those checks.
Parent portal aims to stop ID misuse
Mansour noted that Kalshi is building a system that lets parents submit their identification even if they do not want to trade on the platform. According to him, the goal is to help them find out whether someone else is using their identity to create or run an account.
He described the feature in direct terms, saying, “We are launching a portal for parents to basically submit their identification, even if they don’t want to be users of Kalshi, to see if someone is using it.” He added that parents could then check whether their children were using their ID and act on it themselves.
That approach shows Kalshi is placing more weight on identity checks beyond the first stage of account opening. It also suggests the company expects underage misuse to remain a live issue as prediction markets keep drawing more retail users and more public attention.
This point is supported by Mansour’s description of the portal as a direct response to children using a parent’s ID to get around platform rules.
Selfie checks and family accounts widen oversight
Kalshi also plans to add selfie checks to compare the face on an account with the identification used to create it. Mansour said the company wants to use AI tools to spot obvious mismatches, including cases where the account user does not appear to be the parent tied to the ID.
“We are also adding selfies to accounts, where you can basically look at the face of a person, and it can tell you obviously if this person is not the actual parent that’s 50 years old,” he noted.
He also said, “But there’s a lot more to do,” signaling that Kalshi may add more checks later.
Mansour also said Kalshi will create a family account concept that lets friends and family track one another’s activity. He framed that as a way to build social accountability around trading behavior, not only around age checks.
He said the company is “launching this kind of notion of family accounts where people can track each others’ activity.” He also asked, “How do we kind of create a sort of accountability structure amongst friends and families,” before adding that Kalshi wants the product to be “a tool for good, not a tool for excessive behaviors.”
Legal fights keep pressure on prediction markets
Kalshi’s new controls arrive while the company remains in court fights over how prediction markets should be regulated in the United States. On April 9, a federal judge blocked Arizona from continuing its criminal case against Kalshi after the Commodity Futures Trading Commission asked the court to step in.
The CFTC said Arizona’s use of criminal law against federally regulated designated contract markets clashed with federal authority.
That Arizona ruling came days after a federal appeals court sided with Kalshi in New Jersey. On April 6, the Third Circuit said the CFTC has exclusive jurisdiction over Kalshi’s sports-related event contracts and that federal law likely preempts state law in that dispute.
The ruling marked the first federal appeals decision on the wider fight between state gaming rules and federally regulated prediction markets.
At the same time, Kalshi has not won every case. A Nevada judge said on April 3 that the platform could not offer certain event contracts in the state without a gaming license, extending a ban sought by the Nevada Gaming Control Board.
That split picture shows why Kalshi is dealing with both legal and operational pressure at once.
Competition grows as Kalshi tightens controls
Kalshi is also adding these safeguards as competition in prediction markets expands. Binance announced prediction markets in its app through an integration with third-party platforms last week, opening access to probability-based markets inside Binance Wallet.
In addition, Crypto.com, through its North America derivatives unit, also signed a deal with High Roller Technologies on April 14 to launch an event-based prediction markets offering in the United States.
Ultimately, that market backdrop gives Kalshi more reason to show that it is tightening internal controls while the sector grows. Mansour’s comments focused on minors, identity misuse, and excessive behavior rather than market expansion alone.