A machine-readable passport (MRP) is a
machine-readable travel document (MRTD) with the data on the identity page encoded in
optical character recognition
Optical character recognition or optical character reader (OCR) is the electronic or mechanical conversion of images of typed, handwritten or printed text into machine-encoded text, whether from a scanned document, a photo of a document, a scen ...
format. Many countries began to issue machine-readable travel documents in the 1980s.
Most travel
passports
A passport is an official travel document issued by a government that contains a person's identity. A person with a passport can travel to and from foreign countries more easily and access consular assistance. A passport certifies the personal ...
worldwide are MRPs. They are standardized by the ''
ICAO
The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO, ) is a specialized agency of the United Nations that coordinates the principles and techniques of international air navigation, and fosters the planning and development of international a ...
Document 9303'' (endorsed by the
International Organization for Standardization
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO ) is an international standard development organization composed of representatives from the national standards organizations of member countries. Membership requirements are given in Ar ...
and the
International Electrotechnical Commission
The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC; in French: ''Commission électrotechnique internationale'') is an international standards organization that prepares and publishes international standards for all electrical, electronic and r ...
as ISO/IEC 7501-1) and have a special ''machine-readable zone'' (''MRZ''), which is usually at the bottom of the identity page at the beginning of a passport. The ICAO 9303 describes three types of documents corresponding to the
ISO/IEC 7810
ISO/IEC 7810 ''Identification cards — Physical characteristics'' is an international standard that defines the physical characteristics for identification cards.
The characteristics specified include:
* Physical dimensions
* Resistance to b ...
sizes:
* "Type 3" is typical of passport booklets. The MRZ consists of 2 lines × 44 characters.
* "Type 2" is relatively rare with 2 lines × 36 characters.
* "Type 1" is of a credit card-size with 3 lines × 30 characters.
The fixed format allows specification of document type, name, document number, nationality, date of birth, sex, and document expiration date. All these fields are required on a passport. There is room for optional, often country-dependent, supplementary information. There are also two sizes of machine-readable visas similarly defined.
Computers with a camera and suitable software can directly read the information on machine-readable passports. This enables faster processing of arriving passengers by immigration officials, and greater accuracy than manually-read passports, as well as faster data entry, more data to be read and better data matching against immigration databases and watchlists.
Apart from optically readable information, many passports contain an
RFID
Radio-frequency identification (RFID) uses electromagnetic fields to automatically identify and track tags attached to objects. An RFID system consists of a tiny radio transponder, a radio receiver and transmitter. When triggered by an electromag ...
chip which enables computers to read a higher amount of information, for example a photo of the bearer. These passports are called
biometric passport
A biometric passport (also known as an e-passport or a digital passport) is a traditional passport that has an embedded electronic microprocessor chip which contains biometric information that can be used to authenticate the identity of the pa ...
s and are also described by ICAO 9303.
Format
Passport booklets
Passport booklets have an identity page containing the identity data. This page is in the
TD3 size of 125 × 88 mm (4.92 × 3.46 in).
The data of the machine-readable zone consists of two rows of 44 characters each. The only characters used are A–Z, 0–9 and the filler character <.
In the name field, spaces, hyphens and other punctuation are represented by <, except
apostrophe
The apostrophe ( or ) is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritical mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet and some other alphabets. In English, the apostrophe is used for two basic purposes:
* The marking of the omission of one o ...
s, which are skipped. If the names are too long, names are abbreviated to their most significant parts. In that case, the last position must contain an alphabetic character to indicate possible truncation, and if there is a given name, the two fillers and at least one character of it must be included.
Official travel documents
![HunIDback](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3b/HunIDback.jpg)
Smaller documents such as identity and passport cards are usually in the
TD1 size, which is 85.6 × 54.0 mm (3.37 × 2.13 in), the same size as credit cards. The data of the machine-readable zone in a TD1 size card consists of three rows of 30 characters each. The only characters used are A–Z, 0–9 and the filler character <.
Some official travel documents are in the larger
TD2 size, 105.0 × 74.0 (4.13 × 2.91 in). They have a layout of the MRZ with two rows of 36 characters each, similar to the TD3 format, but with 31 characters for the name, 7 for the personal number and one less check digit. Yet some official travel documents are in the booklet format with a TD3 identity page.
The format of the first row for TD1 (credit card size) documents is:
The format of the second row is:
1: United States Passport Card
The United States passport card is an optional national identity card and a travel document issued by the U.S. federal government in the size of a credit card. Like a U.S. passport book, the passport card is only issued to U.S. nationals exclu ...
s, as of 2011, use this field for the application number that produced the card.
The format of the third row is:
The format of the first row for TD2 (medium size) documents is:
The format of the second row is:
Machine-readable visas
The ICAO Document 9303 part 7 describes machine-readable visas. They come in two different formats:
*MRV-A - 80 mm × 120 mm (3.15 in × 4.72 in), 2 × 44 chars
*MRV-B - 74 mm × 105 mm (2.91 in × 4.13 in), 2 × 36 chars
The format of the first row of the machine-readable zone is:
The format of the second row is:
Specifications common to all formats
The ICAO document 9303 part 3 describes specifications common to all Machine Readable Travel Documents.
The dimensions of the effective reading zone (ERZ) is standardized at in height with a margin of 3 mm at the document edges and 3.2 mm at the edge against the visual readable part. This is in order to allow use of a single machine reader.
Only characters A to Z (upper case), 0–9, and < (
angle bracket
A bracket is either of two tall fore- or back-facing punctuation marks commonly used to isolate a segment of text or data from its surroundings. Typically deployed in symmetric pairs, an individual bracket may be identified as a 'left' or 'r ...
) are allowed. The typeface is
OCR-B
OCR-B is a monospace font developed in 1968 by Adrian Frutiger for Monotype by following the European Computer Manufacturer's Association standard. Its function was to facilitate the optical character recognition operations by specific electronic ...
.
Nationality codes
The nationality codes shall contain the
ISO 3166-1 alpha-3
ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 codes are three-letter country codes defined in ISO 3166-1, part of the ISO 3166 standard published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), to represent countries, dependent territories, and special areas of ...
code with modifications for all formats. The check digit calculation method is also the same for all formats.
Some values that are different from ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 are used for the issuing country and nationality field:
* BAH:
Bahamas
The Bahamas (), officially the Commonwealth of The Bahamas, is an island country within the Lucayan Archipelago of the West Indies in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic. It takes up 97% of the Lucayan Archipelago's land area and is home to ...
(erroneously used in some early
Bahamian passports; corrected to BHS)
* D:
Germany
Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...
* EUE:
European Union
The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been des ...
* GBD:
British Overseas Territories Citizen
A British Overseas Territories citizen (BOTC), formerly called British Dependent Territories citizen (BDTC), is a member of a class of British nationality granted to people connected with one or more of the British Overseas Territories (previo ...
(BOTC) (note: the country code of the overseas territory is used to indicate issuing authority and nationality of BOTC), formerly British Dependent Territories Citizen (BDTC)
* GBN:
British National (Overseas)
British National (Overseas), abbreviated BN(O), is a class of British nationality law, British nationality associated with the British Hong Kong, former colony of Hong Kong. The status was acquired through voluntary registration by individual ...
* GBO:
British Overseas Citizen
A British Overseas citizen (BOC) is a holder of a residual class of British nationality, largely held by people connected with former British colonies who do not have close ties to the United Kingdom or its remaining overseas territories. In ...
* GBP:
British Protected Person
A British protected person (BPP) is a member of a class of British nationality associated with former protectorates, protected states, and territorial mandates and trusts under British control. Individuals with this nationality are British na ...
* GBS:
British Subject
The term "British subject" has several different meanings depending on the time period. Before 1949, it referred to almost all subjects of the British Empire (including the United Kingdom, Dominions, and colonies, but excluding protectorates ...
* UNA:
specialized agency of the United Nations
* UNK: Resident of
Kosovo
Kosovo ( sq, Kosova or ; sr-Cyrl, Косово ), officially the Republic of Kosovo ( sq, Republika e Kosovës, links=no; sr, Република Косово, Republika Kosovo, links=no), is a partially recognised state in Southeast Euro ...
to whom a
travel document
A travel document is an identity document issued by a government or international entity pursuant to international agreements to enable individuals to clear border control measures. Travel documents usually assure other governments that the beare ...
has been issued by the
United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo
The United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) is the officially mandated mission of the United Nations in Kosovo. The UNMIK describes its mandate as being to "help the United Nations Security Council achieve an overall ...
(UNMIK)
* UNO:
United Nations
The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and international security, security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be ...
organization
* XBA:
African Development Bank
The African Development Bank Group (AfDB) or (BAD) is a multilateral development finance institution headquartered in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, since September 2014. The AfDB is a financial provider to African governments and private companies i ...
* XIM:
African Export–Import Bank
African Export–Import Bank, also referred to as Afreximbank, is a pan-African multilateral trade finance institution created in 1993 under the auspices of the African Development Bank. It is headquartered in Cairo, Egypt. Afreximbank's visi ...
* XCC:
Caribbean Community
The Caribbean Community (CARICOM or CC) is an intergovernmental organization that is a political and economic union of 15 member states (14 nation-states and one dependency) throughout the Caribbean. They have primary objectives to promote econom ...
or one of its emissaries
* XCO:
Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa
* XEC:
Economic Community of West African States
The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS; also known as in French and Portuguese) is a regional political union, political and economic union of fifteen countries located in West Africa. Collectively, these countries comprise an ...
* XPO:
International Criminal Police Organization
The International Criminal Police Organization (ICPO; french: link=no, Organisation internationale de police criminelle), commonly known as Interpol ( , ), is an international organization that facilitates worldwide police cooperation and cri ...
* XOM:
Sovereign Military Order of Malta
The Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM), officially the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes and of Malta ( it, Sovrano Militare Ordine Ospedaliero di San Giovanni di Gerusalemme, di Rodi e di Malta; ...
* XXA:
Stateless person
Stateless may refer to:
Society
* Anarchism, a political philosophy opposed to the institution of the state
* Stateless communism, which Karl Marx predicted would be the final phase of communism
* Stateless nation, a group of people without ...
, as per the 1954
Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons
The Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons is a 1954 United Nations multilateral treaty that aims to protect stateless individuals.
Surrounding events
The United Nations Charter and Universal Declaration of Human Rights were a ...
* XXB:
Refugee
A refugee, conventionally speaking, is a displaced person who has crossed national borders and who cannot or is unwilling to return home due to well-founded fear of persecution. , as per the 1951
Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees
The Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, also known as the 1951 Refugee Convention or the Geneva Convention of 28 July 1951, is a United Nations multilateral treaty that defines who a refugee is, and sets out the rights of individual ...
* XXC: Refugee, other than defined above
* XXX: Unspecified nationality
* ZIM:
Zimbabwe
Zimbabwe (), officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country located in Southeast Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the south-west, Zambia to the north, and Mozam ...
(erroneously used in some early
Zimbabwean passports; corrected to ZWE)
Other values, which do not have broad acceptance internationally, include:
* NSK:
Neue Slowenische Kunst
Neue Slowenische Kunst (; NSK; German: "New Slovenian Art") is a political art collective that formed in Slovenia in 1984, when the Socialist Republic of Slovenia was part of Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. NSK's name was chosen to refl ...
passport (basically not accepted at all as passport)
* RKS:
Kosovo
Kosovo ( sq, Kosova or ; sr-Cyrl, Косово ), officially the Republic of Kosovo ( sq, Republika e Kosovës, links=no; sr, Република Косово, Republika Kosovo, links=no), is a partially recognised state in Southeast Euro ...
* WSA:
World Service Authority
The World Service Authority (WSA), founded in 1953 by Garry Davis, is a non-profit organization that claims to educate about and promote "world citizenship", "world law", and world government. It is best known for selling unofficial fantasy do ...
World Passport
The World Passport is a fantasy travel document sold by the World Service Authority, a non-profit organization founded by Garry Davis in 1954. (basically not accepted at all as passport)
* XCT:
Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus
Northern Cyprus ( tr, Kuzey Kıbrıs), officially the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC; tr, Kuzey Kıbrıs Türk Cumhuriyeti, ''KKTC''), is a ''de facto'' state that comprises the northeastern portion of the island of Cyprus. Recog ...
Checksum calculation
The check digit calculation is as follows: each position is assigned a value; for the digits 0 to 9 this is the value of the digits, for the letters A to Z this is 10 to 35, for the filler < this is 0. The value of each position is then multiplied by its weight; the weight of the first position is 7, of the second it is 3, and of the third it is 1, and after that the weights repeat 7, 3, 1, and so on. All values are added together and the remainder of the final value divided by 10 is the check digit.
Names
Due to technical limits, characters inside the Machine Readable Zone (MRZ) need to be restricted to the 10
Arabic numerals
Arabic numerals are the ten numerical digits: , , , , , , , , and . They are the most commonly used symbols to write Decimal, decimal numbers. They are also used for writing numbers in other systems such as octal, and for writing identifiers ...
, the 26 capital Latin letters A through Z, and the filler character <.
Apostrophe
The apostrophe ( or ) is a punctuation mark, and sometimes a diacritical mark, in languages that use the Latin alphabet and some other alphabets. In English, the apostrophe is used for two basic purposes:
* The marking of the omission of one o ...
s and similar punctuation marks have to be omitted, but
hyphen
The hyphen is a punctuation mark used to join words and to separate syllables of a single word. The use of hyphens is called hyphenation. ''Son-in-law'' is an example of a hyphenated word. The hyphen is sometimes confused with dashes (figure d ...
s and spaces should be replaced by an opening angle bracket.
Diacritical mark
A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacritic ...
s are not permitted in the MRZ. Even though they may be useful to distinguish names, the use of diacritical marks in the MRZ could confuse machine-reading equipment.
Section 6 of the 9303 part 3 document specifies transliteration of letters outside the A–Z range. It recommends that diacritical marks on
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
letters A-Z are simply omitted (ç → C, ð → D, ê → E, ñ → N etc.), but it allows the following transliterations:
* å → AA
* ä → AE
* ð → DH
*
ij (Dutch letter; capital form: IJ, the J as part of the ligature being capitalized, too)→ IJ
* ö → OE
* ü → UE (German) or UXX (Spanish; not used in reality)
* ñ → NXX (not used in reality)
The following transliterations are mandatory:
* æ → AE
* ø, œ → OE
* ß → SS
* þ → TH
In Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Hungary and Scandinavia it is standard to use the Å→AA, Ä or Æ→AE, Ö or Ø→OE, Ü→UE, and ß→SS mappings, so
Müller'' becomes MUELLER, Gößmann becomes GOESSMANN, and
Hämäläinen becomes HAEMAELAEINEN. ð, ñ and ü occur in Iceland and Spain, but they write them as D, N and U.
Austrian passports may (but do not always) contain a trilingual (in German, English, and French) explanation of the German
umlauts and ß, e.g. 'ß' entspricht / is equal to / correspond à 'SS'.
There are also tables for the
transliteration
Transliteration is a type of conversion of a text from one writing system, script to another that involves swapping Letter (alphabet), letters (thus ''wikt:trans-#Prefix, trans-'' + ''wikt:littera#Latin, liter-'') in predictable ways, such as ...
of names written using
Cyrillic
, bg, кирилица , mk, кирилица , russian: кириллица , sr, ћирилица, uk, кирилиця
, fam1 = Egyptian hieroglyphs
, fam2 = Proto-Sinaitic
, fam3 = Phoenician
, fam4 = G ...
and
Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...
scripts, mainly based on transliteration rules into English. For example, the Russian surname Горбачёв ("Gorbatschow" in German, "Gorbatchov" in French, "Gorbachov" in Spanish, "Gorbaczow" in Polish) is transcribed "Gorbachev" in both English and according to the ICAO 9303 rules.
Russian visas (and Russian internal passports since 2011) have a different transliteration into the machine-readable zone. As an example, the letter "ч" is usually transcribed as "ch" in Russian travel documents, however, Russian visas and internal passports use "3" in the machine-readable zone instead. Another example is "Alexei" (travel passport) → "Алексей" (Cyrillic version) → "ALEKSEQ" (machine readable version in an internal document). This makes it easier to transliterate the name back to Cyrillic.
First and given names
For airline tickets, visas and more, the advice is to only use the first name written in the passport. This is a problem for people who use their second name (as defined by the order in the passport) as their main name in daily speech. It is common, for example in Scandinavia, that the second or even third name is the one defined for daily usage. For example, the actor
Hugh Laurie
James Hugh Calum Laurie (; born 11 June 1959) is an English actor, comedian, writer, and musician. He first gained recognition for his work as one half of the comedy double act Fry and Laurie with Stephen Fry. The two men acted together in a ...
, whose full name is James Hugh Calum Laurie. Swedish travel agents usually book people using the first and daily name if the first one is not their main name, despite advice to use only the first name. If this is too long, the spelling in the MRZ could be used.
For people using a variant of their first name in daily speech, for example the former US president
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson Clinton ( né Blythe III; born August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. He previously served as governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981 and agai ...
whose full name is William Jefferson Clinton, the advice is to spell their name as in the passport.
In Scandinavian legislation, middle name is a name placed between given and surname, and is usually a family name. Such names are written as extra surname in the passports. People have been stranded at airports since they entered this extra family name in the "middle name" field in airline booking form, which in English speaking tradition is a given name.
Chinese
Chinese can refer to:
* Something related to China
* Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity
**''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation
** List of ethnic groups in China, people of ...
,
Japanese
Japanese may refer to:
* Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia
* Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan
* Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture
** Japanese diaspor ...
,
Korean
Korean may refer to:
People and culture
* Koreans, ethnic group originating in the Korean Peninsula
* Korean cuisine
* Korean culture
* Korean language
**Korean alphabet, known as Hangul or Chosŏn'gŭl
**Korean dialects and the Jeju language
** ...
and
Hungarian name
Hungarian names include surnames and given names. Some people have more than one given name, but only one is normally used. In the Hungarian language, whether written or spoken, names are invariably given in the "Eastern name order", or family n ...
s might pose a challenge too, since the family name is normally written first. Tickets should use given name and surname as indicated in passports.
This name issue is also an issue for post-Brexit EU women under the Brexit settled status (they have two family names, a birth and marriage name, but only the birth name was used by the passport MRZ and therefore used in the settlement application, although they have been using the married name in UK population register).
See also
*
Basic Access Control
*
Biometric passport
A biometric passport (also known as an e-passport or a digital passport) is a traditional passport that has an embedded electronic microprocessor chip which contains biometric information that can be used to authenticate the identity of the pa ...
*
Card standards
Card standard(s) may refer to any amount of numbers of ISO standards related to smartcards.
* ISO/IEC 7810 Identification cards — Physical characteristics
* ISO/IEC 7812 Identification cards — Identification of issuers
* ISO/IEC 7816 Identifica ...
*
ISO/IEC 14443
ISO/IEC 14443 ''Identification cards -- Contactless integrated circuit cards -- Proximity cards'' is an international standard that defines proximity cards used for identification, and the transmission protocols for communicating with it.
Standa ...
(
Proximity card
A proximity card or prox card also known as a key card or keycard is a contactless smart card which can be read without inserting it into a reader device, as required by earlier magnetic stripe cards such as credit cards and contact type sma ...
standard)
*
List of national identity card policies by country
This is a list of identity document policies by country.
A national identity document is an identity card with a photo, usable as an identity card at least inside the country, and which is issued by an official authority.
Driver's licenses and ...
*
Identity document
An identity document (also called ID or colloquially as papers) is any documentation, document that may be used to prove a person's identity. If issued in a small, standard credit card size form, it is usually called an identity card (IC, ID c ...
*
Identity Cards Act 2006 of the United Kingdom
*
Universal Electronic Card
References
External links
A description of the Machine Readable Passport ZoneMRTD - Machine Readable Travel Document - Home (ICAO)ICAO Standards for e-Passports: Machine Readable Travel Documents
{{Identity cards
Passports