The United States passport card is an optional national
identity card
An identity document (also called ID or colloquially as papers) is any 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 card, citizen ca ...
and 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 ...
issued by the
U.S. federal government in the size of a
credit card
A credit card is a payment card issued to users (cardholders) to enable the cardholder to pay a merchant for goods and services based on the cardholder's accrued debt (i.e., promise to the card issuer to pay them for the amounts plus the o ...
. Like a
U.S. passport book, the passport card is only issued to
U.S. nationals exclusively by the
U.S. Department of State, compliant to the standards for identity documents set by the
REAL ID Act, and can be used as proof of
U.S. citizenship and
identity. The passport card allows its holders to travel by domestic air flights within the U.S., and to travel by land and sea within North America.
However, the passport card cannot be used for international
air travel
Air travel is a form of travel in vehicles such as airplanes, jet aircraft, helicopters, hot air balloons, blimps, gliders, hang gliders, parachutes, or anything else that can sustain flight. .
The passport card (previously known as the People Access Security Service Card or PASS Card) was created as a result of the
Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, which imposed more stringent documentary requirements on travelers. Applications have been accepted since February 1, 2008; production of the cards began on July 14, 2008. By the end of 2016, more than 12 million passport cards had been issued to U.S. citizens. The card is manufactured by
L-1 Identity Solutions.
National identity cards with similar utility are
common inside the
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 ...
and
European Free Trade Association
The European Free Trade Association (EFTA) is a regional trade organization and free trade area consisting of four European states: Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland. The organization operates in parallel with the European ...
countries for both national and international use, with the difference that such cards can also be used for international air travel (within the EU, the
Schengen Area
The Schengen Area ( , ) is an area comprising 27 European countries that have officially abolished all passport and all other types of border control at their mutual borders. Being an element within the wider area of freedom, security and ...
and several other European countries that allow entry with a national ID card).
History
As a result of the
September 11, 2001, attacks
The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commerci ...
, the United States began implementing a range of measures to increase the security of its
borders and its
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 ...
s. One result of this was the
Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI), which mandates as of 2007 that a smaller, more secure number of documents verifying both identity and citizenship be used to facilitate identification and international border crossing. Previous to the WHTI, many different types of documents were acceptable to cross the border, including birth certificates issued by thousands of different authorities within the United States and Canada. As a result of the WHTI, U.S. citizens traveling to Canada would have been required to obtain a
passport
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 perso ...
booklet in order to enter the United States. In order to offer a less expensive and more portable alternative to border communities and frequent travelers, the passport card was developed.
In an effort to improve efficiency at land crossings, the passport card also includes a vicinity-read
radio frequency identification
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 electroma ...
chip with a unique identifying number tied to
government database A government database collects information for various reasons, including climate monitoring, securities law compliance, geological surveys, patent applications and grants, surveillance, national security, border control, law enforcement, public ...
s. Unlike the passport book, the
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 electroma ...
chip in the passport card is designed to be readable at a greater distance, allowing border agents to access traveler information before they pull up to the inspection station. While a
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 p ...
contains a chip containing all of the traveler's information in electronic format, the RFID chip in a passport card does not contain any personal information beyond the identifying number, which is used to locate records in secure government databases. To prevent the RFID chip from being read when the card is not being used, the passport card comes with a sleeve designed to block RFID while inside.
Use
As an international travel document
U.S. passport cards can be used to enter the United States at land border crossings and sea ports of entry. It is also accepted for entry by land or sea into Canada, Mexico, and some countries and territories in the
Caribbean. It cannot be used to travel by air to these countries, or by any means to other countries.
The Department of State stated that this limited validity is because "designing a card format passport for wide use, including by air travelers, would inadvertently undercut the broad based international effort to strengthen civil aviation security and travel document specifications to address the post 9/11 threat environment".
[US Government Printing Office (2006-10-17). Federal Register, Volume 71 Issue 200. US Government Printing Office, 17 October 2006. Retrieved on 2010-08-04 from http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2006-10-17/html/E6-17237.htm.]
As personal identification
Aside from being unable to be used for international air travel, the passport card is treated as a passport for all other purposes. A United States passport card can be used as primary evidence of United States citizenship, just like a passport booklet, and can be used as a valid proof of citizenship and proof of identity both inside and outside the United States.
Within the United States
Under the
REAL ID Act, the passport card is accepted for federal purposes (such as domestic air travel or entering federal buildings), which may make it an attractive option for people whose
driver's licenses
A driver's license is a legal authorization, or the official document confirming such an authorization, for a specific individual to operate one or more types of motorized vehicles—such as motorcycles, cars, trucks, or buses—on a public ...
and ID cards are not REAL ID-compliant when those requirements go into effect on May 3, 2025. TSA regulations list the passport card as an acceptable identity document at airport security checkpoints.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has indicated that the U.S. passport card may be used in the Employment Eligibility Verification Form
I-9 process. The passport card is considered a "List A" document that may be presented by newly hired employees during the employment eligibility verification process to show work authorized status. "List A" documents are those used by employees to prove both identity and work authorization when completing the Form I-9.
Passport cards are much less popular than driver licenses, a commonly used form of identification. As previously stated, in 2014 there were more than 12 million passport cards issued. In contrast, in 2009 there were 210 million licensed drivers.
Outside the United States
In some countries, laws require foreign visitors and/or all adults to carry official personal identification at all times. Carrying a passport card may meet the demands of local law enforcement without the risks associated with carrying the full passport booklet.
Compared with state ID cards and driver's licenses, the passport card is designed to be more universal. It is formatted to United Nations
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 ...
machine readable document
A machine-readable document is a document whose content can be readily processed by computers. Such documents are distinguished from machine-readable data by virtue of having sufficient structure to provide the necessary context to support the bus ...
standards, which are used on IDs around the world. Also, unlike state driver's licenses, which may not even list the country on them, the passport card contains the words United States of America in its header. It also contains national symbols, such as a U.S. flag, in the background, as opposed to the state symbols found on driver's licenses. Since people abroad may not be familiar with every U.S. state, the passport card's emphasis on being from the United States makes it more understood in this regard.
Validity and fees
The passport card shares the same validity period as the passport book: 10 years for persons 16 and over, 5 years for children under 16. As of April 9, 2018, the passport card renewal fee for eligible applicants (adults only, by mail) is US$30; first-time applicants and those applying in person must also pay a $35 processing fee, for a total fee of $65. Passport cards for children must be applied for in person; the total fee is $50, including the $35 processing fee.
Adults who already have a fully valid passport book may pay a fee of $30 to apply for the card using the passport renewal form, regardless of when the passport book expires.
A citizen or national is allowed to hold both a passport card and a passport book. Both may be applied for simultaneously by paying the respective fees for each passport, plus a single $35 processing fee for first-time and other in-person applicants.
Card layout
The passport card is formatted according to specifications for
credit card (ID-1) sized travel documents, as described in ICAO Document 9303, Part 3, Volume 1. The card contains both human-readable and machine-readable information; the latter is printed in the
machine-readable zone
A machine-readable passport (MRP) is a machine-readable travel document (MRTD) with the data on the identity page encoded in optical character recognition format. Many countries began to issue machine-readable travel documents in the 1980s.
Mos ...
on the rear of the card as
OCR-readable text in a similar format as on the identity page of the passport book. The zone starts with the letters IP (designated by ICAO for passport card), followed by the issuing country code USA and then the passport card's serial number (which is prefixed with a "C" and differs from the individual's passport book number, even if issued together). The general layout of the passport card is virtually identical to the layout of the
Border Crossing Card
A Border Crossing Card (BCC) is an identity document used by nationals of Mexico to enter the United States. As a standalone document, the BCC allows its holder to visit the border areas of the United States when entering by land or sea directly fr ...
issued to Mexican citizens with primarily the background imagery and entitlements varying between the two cards.
Anti-counterfeiting features
In addition to the embedded RFID chip, the front of the card features a complex multi-layer hologram consisting of an American bald eagle surrounded by the words "United States of America Department of State" in a small clearly readable font, further surrounded by the same words repeatedly in microprint. The card's background consists of interweaving smooth curves rich in variable color and microprint. All of the personal information on the card is created by laser engraving, with some key information produced in raised tactile engraving, including the date of birth, vertical letters "USA", the passport card number, and an alphanumeric sequence underneath the photograph. A second, smaller "ghost" photograph of the bearer is included on the right side of the card; when closely inspected this ghost image is actually an approximation of the shading in the original photo composed of various letters from the card holder's name. There is an embossed seal in the upper left hand corner of the card (partially overlapping the photograph) depicting the obverse of the
Great Seal of the United States. When viewed under UV lighting, a reddish-orange bald eagle in flight appears. The eagle carries thirteen arrows in one talon and an olive branch with thirteen leaves and thirteen olives on the branch. The eagle's image is 3-dimensional, with the flying figure poised above the shield from the Great Seal. In its beak, the eagle clutches a scroll with the motto E pluribus unum ("Out of Many, One"). On the rear of the card, the "PASSsystem" mark appears in
optically variable ink
Optically variable ink (OVI) also called color shifting ink is an anti- counterfeiting measure used on many major modern banknotes, as well as on other official documents ( professional licenses, for example).
The ink displays two distinct colo ...
, and the number, "C########", is a raised tactile engraving.
References
Further reading
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External links
Fact Sheet: Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI) Passport Card Technology Choice: Vicinity RFIDRelease Date: October 17, 2006
Release Date: January 8, 2008
{{identity cards
Expedited border crossing schemes
International travel documents
Passports by country
Canada–United States relations
United States–Caribbean relations
Radio-frequency identification
2008 establishments in the United States
Passport Card
Passport Card
Passport Card