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. Most travel passports worldwide are MRPs. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) required all ICAO member states to issue only MRPs as of April 1, 2010, with all non-MRP passports expiring by November 24, 2015. Machine-readable passports are standardized by the ICAO Document 9303 (endorsed by the International Organization for Standardization and the International Electrotechnical Commission 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 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 chip which enables computers to read a higher amount of information, for example a photo of the bearer. These passports are called biometric passports 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 ID-3 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 the Latin letters A–Z, the Arabic numerals 0–9, and the filler character <.
In the name field, spaces, hyphens and other punctuation are represented by <, except apostrophes, 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
Smaller documents such as identity and passport cards are usually in the ID-1 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 ID-2 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 ID-1 (credit card size) documents is:
The format of the second row is:
1: United States Passport Cards, 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 ID-2 (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 17.0 mm (0.67 in) 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.
Nationality / Citizenship codes The nationality codes shall contain the ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 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 (erroneously used in some early Bahamian passports; corrected to BHS) D: Germany EUE: European Union GBD: British Overseas Territories Citizen (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) GBO: British Overseas Citizen GBP: British Protected Person GBS: British Subject RKS: Kosovo UNA: specialized agency of the United Nations UNK: Resident of Kosovo to whom a travel document has been issued by the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) UNO: United Nations organization XBA: African Development Bank XIM: African Export–Import Bank XCC: Caribbean Community or one of its emissaries XCO: Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa XEC: Economic Community of West African States XPO: International Criminal Police Organization XOM: Sovereign Military Order of Malta XXA: Stateless person, as per the 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons XXB: Refugee, as per the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees XXC: Refugee, other than defined above XXX: Unspecified nationality ZIM: Zimbabwe (erroneously used in some early Zimbabwean passports; corrected to ZWE) Other values, which do not have broad acceptance internationally, include:
NSK: Neue Slowenische Kunst passport (basically not accepted at all as passport) RKS: Kosovo WSA: World Service Authority World Passport (basically not accepted at all as passport) XCT: Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus
… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.
