BOURNEMOUTH has been chosen to showcase a new app which allows people to prove their age and identity through their phones.

Yoti was devised as a free and secure way for people to show who they are without having to carry around vital personal papers.

It has already been downloaded at least 380,000 times, but Bournemouth was picked as the place for a widespread rollout.

Deltic Group, which owns the town’s Cameo nightclub, has decided to use the app across its chain of venues, while other names such as Walkabout and Yates have also signed up.

Mark Hindle, Yoti’s brand and communications manager, said: “Bournemouth residents will be able to use Yoti at clubs, bars and pubs and leave their ID safe at home on nights out – as well as removing the need for passport photocopies when renting a flat or proving your identity to businesses.”

Yoti users take a selfie to start the process, then set a PIN and prove that they are human by repeating some key words from a video.

They then upload a photo of their driving licence or passport, which is stored on Yoti's server in encrypted form.

The encryption keys are kept on the phone, so that even Yoti cannot access the data.

Chris Field, chief marketing officer, said: “We’ve built it in such a way to make sure we can’t do anything with it even if we wanted to.

“We want to get to a place where people are more in control of their data and have a receipt for it.”

The creators said they chose Bournemouth for the rollout because it had both a high number of people using mobile technology, as well as a large number of licensed premises where prove of age was needed.

A user turning up at a pub or club authorises Yoti to verify their ID, and a verification is then sent to the device of the doorman checking it.

The user always controls what details they would like to send to another person or business and receives a receipt.

Its creators say Yoti can also be used by customers of online dating sites to share data that will verify each other’s identity.

Mr Hindle said: “It’s the perfect place to do such a great test. It’s a market of people that are very tech-savvy.”

Yoti is free to the individual user, but businesses pay 30p or more to verify someone’s age.

The app is available for Apple and Android devices.