The National ID Card (Arabic: Biṭāgat Al-hawiyya Al-waṭaniyya بطاقة الهوية الوطنية), commonly known by its old colloquial name Biṭāgat Al-ʼaḥwāl (
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 ...
: بطاقة الأحوال ), is a Saudi Arabian
identity card
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 ...
and
proof of citizenship. The card is used for identification with "government agencies and third party service providers such as banks".
The card may also be used for travel within the countries of the
Gulf Cooperation Council
The Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf ( ar, مجلس التعاون لدول العربية الخليج ), also known as the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC; ar, مجلس التعاون الخليجي), is a regional, interg ...
(GCC). Since April 2010.
Physical appearance and data storage
The card is credit-card-sized and contains a 2.86-megabyte optical stripe and a contact chip to store data, as well as finger prints and a facial image. The card does contain a barcode, but no
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 ...
. All fields of the card are in
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 ...
except for the texts ''National ID Card'' and ''Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Ministry of Interior'', which is also present in English.
[
]
See also
* Saudi Arabian passport
The Saudi passport ( ar, جواز السفر السعودي) is a passport document issued to citizens of Saudi Arabia for international travel. It is valid for five or ten lunar years.
Passport issuance procedures
An applicant is required to fi ...
References
{{Saudi Arabia topics
Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in Western Asia. It covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and has a land area of about , making it the fifth-largest country in Asia, the second-largest in the A ...
Government of Saudi Arabia