Overview#

ICAO Document 9303 is a ICAO standard endorsed by the International Organization for Standardization and the International Electrotechnical Commission as ISO/IEC 7501-1 which a special Machine-Readable Zone (MRZ), which is usually at the bottom of the identity page at the beginning of a passport.

ICAO Document 9303 describes three types of Machine Readable Travel Documents. Specifications for the Security of the Design, Manufacture and Issuance of MRTDs

• Part 1: Introduction
• Part 2: Specifications for the Security of the Design, Manufacture and Issuance of MRTDs
• Part 3: Specifications Common to all MRTDs (Amendment for New Part B in Page 28 and Part D in page 29)
• Part 4: Specifications for Machine Readable Passports (MRPs) and other TD3 Size MRTDs - format which is a Machine-Readable Zone spans two lines, and each line is 44 characters long
• Part 5: Specifications for TD1 Size Machine Readable Official Travel Documents (MROTDs) - which is a Machine-Readable Zone spans three lines, and each line is 30 characters long.
• Part 6: Specifications for TD2 Size Machine Readable Official Travel Documents (MROTDs)
• Part 7: Machine Readable Visas
• Part 8: Emergency Travel Documents
• Part 9: Deployment of Biometric Identification and Electronic Storage of Data in Electronic Machine Readable Travel Documents (EMRTD)s
• Part 10: Logical Data Structure (LDS) for Storage of Biometrics and Other Data in the Contactless Chip Cards
• Part 11: Security Mechanisms for MRTDs
• Part 12: Public Key Infrastructure for MRTDs

The following information must be provided in the zone:

• name
• passport number
• nationality
• date of birth
• sex
• passport expiration date.
• There is room for optional, often country-dependent, supplementary information.

devices 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.

More Information#

There might be more information for this subject on one of the following:

• Biometric Passport
• ICAO
• ISO 7501
• Machine Readable Official Travel Documents
• Machine Readable Passport
• Machine Readable Travel Document
• Machine Readable Visas

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• [#1] - Machine Readable Travel Documents - based on information obtained 2019-06-05
• [#2] - Machine-readable_passport - based on information obtained 2019-06-05