Astrology of love and horoscopes 

Biometric passport - what is it? What does a Russian biometric international passport look like? What does a new international passport look like for 10

Biometric passport of the Russian Federation - what it looks like, who can get it, how it differs from a regular one

The history of biometric passports begins in America. The need to introduce identification using human biometric data arose after the 2001 terrorist attacks and threats of new militant attacks. In 2002, the New Orleans Agreement, initiated by the United States, was signed by almost 200 states. In a trial format, Russia introduced the issuance of biometrics for trips abroad only in 2009, and the opportunity to issue a document of a new type appeared to citizens of the Russian Federation in 2010. Despite the fact that biometric passports have been in free use for about 9 years, many still do not know what they look like, what they are needed for, and how they differ from regular foreign passports.

What data is contained in the biometric passport of the Russian Federation?

Biometric data includes the following:

  • iris;
  • facial temperature map;
  • fingerprints.

The biometric passports of citizens of the Russian Federation include papillary patterns of only two index fingers without the iris and temperature map. Instead of the index fingers (if they are missing), prints of the ring, middle or little fingers can be taken. The procedure itself is not troublesome – it takes about 20 seconds. Papillary patterns are scanned by laser, so that the applicant does not experience discomfort from fingerprinting, as, for example, when “rolling” fingerprints with ink from participants in criminal cases.

This information is stored on electronic media in the form of a microcircuit with a contactless interface with a memory of at least 64 kilobytes, which is “sewn” into the passport.

In addition, the document contains:

  • number;
  • last name and first name;
  • citizenship;
  • date of birth;
  • color digital photographic image.

Important! Photographing takes place in the prescribed manner in special booths by employees of the migration department of the internal affairs bodies. Photos taken elsewhere are not suitable for a biometric passport.

What does a passport with a microchip look like?

Outwardly, it is very similar to the old-style international passport - the same dark red booklet, but with more pages and a note on the cover that the document contains a chip.

However, not all passports have a red cover. Diplomatic and official - issued with a green and dark blue cover, respectively.

In total, the biometric passport has 46 pages, that is, 23 sheets, with:

  • The first sheet is plastic;
  • The remaining 22 are paper.

Pages 1 and 2 are placed on a plastic insert, which is a multilayer structure pressed at high temperature with a microcircuit with an antenna placed inside.

What is it needed for?

Like the previous generation document, it is necessary for leaving the Russian Federation and legal stay abroad.

But when there is a choice between issuing a regular and a biometric passport, the question arises - why do you need a new passport if the old document is still valid.

And here are some arguments in favor of biometrics:

  1. Even if you lose your passport, no one will be able to use it, since it contains your individual data, which cannot be faked.
  2. At the border, it will be possible to go through passport control more quickly, since the information from the chip is read and processed instantly.
  3. The negative influence of the human factor during border crossing is excluded, that is, even if the customs officer says that you do not look like yourself in the photo, fingerprints will convince him that you are crossing the border using your document.

In addition, a biometric passport is valid for 10 years, rather than 5 as a regular one, and contains more pages, which allows you to make more trips.

How and where to get it?

Biometric registration can be done through:

  • departments of the migration service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (formerly FMS);
  • “My Documents” centers (formerly MFC);
  • website “State Services” (then you will have to come to the MFC in person for a photo);
  • intermediary firms (will only help prepare documents).

In exceptional cases, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, diplomatic missions and consulates of the Russian Federation abroad can issue such documents.

For this you will need the following documents:

  • Statement.
  • Passport.
  • Digital photo (for the application form).
  • Receipt for payment of state duty.
  • Military ID or certificate from the commissariat.
  • Command permission (for the military).

If a passport is issued for a child, you will need:

  • Application completed by a representative.
  • Representative's passport.
  • Birth certificate.
  • A document confirming foreign travel.
  • Document confirming relationship.
  • Photo.
  • Receipt.

Also, if a child or adult already had a foreign passport at the time of submitting the application, it must be attached to the documents, since it is subject to disposal.

Please note that in 2019, for a biometric passport for children under 14 years old you will have to pay 2500 rubles, over 14 years old - 5000 rubles.

You will have to visit the authority that issues foreign passports more than once: first, to get in line and submit documents, then to take a photo, and finally, to pick up the document that was produced.

Differences between a regular passport and a biometric passport

How long does it take to obtain a biometric passport?

According to 2*, the general period for producing a passport with electronic media when applying to the competent authority at the place of registration is no more than 1 month from the date of submission of the application and documents. There is no way to shorten this period unless your situation is one of the following:

  • serious illness;
  • death of a loved one;
  • need for emergency treatment.

The above circumstances will have to be documented by the authority that issues the passport. The decision on such an application is made on an individual basis, that is, you may still be refused.

If you want to apply for a passport at your place of residence, then the legislator allocates 3 months for this (before February 2018 there were generally four). This waiting period is also provided for persons who wish to become the owner of biometrics, but who are involved in official matters with state secrets (regardless of the place of submission).

The countdown of these deadlines begins from the moment the documents were accepted by the competent authority. If you submit an application in person, there are no questions about accurately establishing this point. But with electronic filing, misunderstandings happen quite often in practice.

The date of filing an application online is considered to be the day an electronic message is sent to the applicant about acceptance of the application. Moreover, it must be sent no later than the working day following the day the application is submitted.

Example. Kholodenko G.I. sent documents and an application through the State Services portal on 02/08/2019 (Friday). The answer came only on February 14, 2019 (Thursday). According to law 2*, the notification should have arrived on February 11, 2019 (not February 9, since it is a Saturday - a day off). The deadlines were violated, so G.I. Kholodenko, guided by the provisions of 3*, sent it to the head of the Department of Internal Affairs of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the region through the State Services website.

At what age can you get it?

There are no age restrictions for receiving a foreign passport with a chip, that is, it can be done even for a newborn when they are issued a birth certificate.

However, when a child is photographed for a passport, he must sit without his parents and look into the lens.

There is one more “but”: fingerprinting when issuing a biometric passport for a child is carried out only from the age of 12.

That is, until the biometric passport of a child under 12 years old will not contain information about the papillary patterns of the fingers, and therefore many parents, not seeing the point in overpaying for biometrics, issue old-style passports for their children. Moreover, the child’s appearance changes greatly, and a new document is issued for a period of 10 years. It is possible that, due to the inconsistency of the photograph, an older child will even have to change it. At the same time, old passports are issued for 5 years - during this period the baby’s appearance is unlikely to change beyond recognition.

Which countries require a biometric passport?

A biometric passport is an alternative to an old-style document and therefore has the same legal force. A citizen of the Russian Federation needs a foreign passport to travel to other states (except Abkhazia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, South Ossetia), and what kind it will be is his personal business. With an old-generation foreign passport you will also be accepted everywhere (including in the EU countries and the USA), as with a biometric passport. The only point is that some countries still require “fingers” upon entry, but if you are going through passport control with a regular passport, you will simply have to go through the fingerprinting procedure on the spot, that is, after that you will still be allowed into the country. At the same time, even holders of biometric passports will have to take their fingerprints again in the Schengen zone.

Can citizens of Ukraine get a biometric passport of the Russian Federation?

In view of the intensified migration processes, persons who came to the Russian Federation for permanent residence have questions about whether they can obtain a Russian biometric passport, being a citizen of another country or a stateless person. The legislator in Article 8 document2* takes a clear position, which implies the issuance of foreign passports only to citizens of the Russian Federation.

Without a foreign passport, traveling outside of Russia is impossible. Traveling around Europe and the world is breaking popularity records; almost every Russian has issued travel documents at least once in his life and knows well what a foreign passport looks like.
Recently, books have been introduced into circulation that differ from the usual little books in many respects. As a result, travel lovers are faced with a choice: to issue a familiar passport for a trip or to give preference to a new biometric document. What is the difference between these two passports and can they be distinguished by their appearance?

The old-style international passport is a red booklet. It contains a number of mandatory features.

  1. This document is printed on letterhead, equipped for security purposes with appropriate state marks and special protection.
  2. An old-style Russian foreign passport contains all the personal information about the owner on the last laminated page.
  3. The inscriptions on the cover of the passport are in Russian.
  4. The authenticity of the owner's photo is confirmed by the ornament to the left of the photo and a round hologram in the lower right part.
  5. Validity period - 5 years.

What does a new international passport look like?

The new type of international passport is significantly different from the previous generation document. It is also a little book with red crusts, but that’s where its similarity to the old-style document ends.

  1. The cover contains an icon indicating the presence of a chip in the document.
  2. The page with the owner’s personal data is made of plastic. An electronic chip is built into it. The remaining pages of the passport are printed on paper with state marks.
  3. The owner's photo is not pasted into the document, but is applied to a plastic page by laser engraving. In this case, neither an ornament nor a hologram is used to confirm the authenticity of the photo.
  4. A special logo is placed in the upper right corner of the page with individual data.
  5. All inscriptions in the passport, including the cover, are made in Russian and English.
  6. The new passport contains 46 pages.
  7. Issued for 10 years.


What information does the passport contain?

It is not difficult to understand what a foreign passport looks like. It is much more important to understand what information it can tell about its owner.

Regardless of the type, the international passport contains the following data:

  1. Owner's full name.
  2. Information about date and .
  3. Information about .
  4. Date of issue and total validity period.

The biometric passport is also equipped with an electronic chip containing additional information about the owner.

What data is contained in the chip?


Despite the fact that the standards for new foreign passports have been approved at the international level, they do not contain a clear list of information that is subject to mandatory microchipping. Therefore, each country adopts its own rules for encrypting data about passport holders.

For example, the United States does not put any information about its citizen on the chip in the passport. Instead, it encrypts a link to a government resource containing all the necessary information about the owner of the document.

In 2009, Russia adopted for itself the rules established in Europe. The following information is recorded on electronic media in a biometric document:

  1. Owner's personal information.
  2. Date of Birth.
  3. Index fingerprints.
  4. Photo.
  5. Information about the government agency that issued the document.

All information that is applied to the chip is protected by BAC control technology. Data can be read only after entering the passport number and expiration date into the system.

The international organization ICAO calls for encryption of iris scans, but so far none of the countries using biometric documents have supported this initiative.

Main differences

The external form of passports of different generations is identical, but in some respects they differ significantly from each other.

First of all, the differences concern parents planning to travel with children. Paste his photograph into the passport of the previous generation and hit the road. But the new biometric type passport does not provide such an opportunity.

Even if the child is only a few months old, parents will have to obtain their own passport for him. At the same time, experts do not recommend issuing a new document for the child, since it will still need to be changed several times as the baby grows and his appearance changes.

The cost and timing of document processing differs. For an old passport you have to pay 2,000 rubles, and you need to wait for the document from 3 to 10 days, maximum 30 days. A new biometric document will cost 5,000 rubles, and when issued at the place of registration.

Many Russians prefer new passports. The difference in the validity period of a biometric document compared to its old counterpart allows you to forget about the problems of paperwork for 10 years and enjoy traveling abroad.

For travelers, the question of which passport to issue periodically becomes relevant. To answer this, you need to understand what a foreign passport looks like, what is the difference between the old and new sample, and what biometric data is.

Purpose of a foreign passport

To cross the borders of their home country, our citizens need a special travel document - a foreign passport. It confirms the identity of a Russian outside the country. When entering foreign countries, a mark indicating the crossing of the border is affixed to the passport, and permission to enter other countries - a visa - is also affixed to it.

With an internal passport, Russians can visit some CIS countries; in other cases, after crossing the border, the general civil document loses its validity.

To perform its functions, a passport must contain a certain set of information about the owner. In addition to the last name, first name and patronymic, the year of birth, country and place of birth are also indicated. An important part of any passport and visa document is a photo of the citizen.

Gift: 2100 rubles for housing!

The differences between the old and new models lie in the volume and form of storing information about the owner. Both documents contain information about the owner’s last name, first name, patronymic and place of birth. But in the new passport, all this information is converted into digital form and can be read by special electronic devices. The same applies to photography. In addition, the new passport has a larger volume, it has 46 pages, versus 36 pages of the old document.

If you look at the first page of the passport, you can see on it, in addition to the information already mentioned:

  • Holographic transmission of the owner's photo.
  • Information about the date of issue of the document and its validity period.
  • Passport ID.
  • Country of residence and its code.
  • Owner's gender.
  • Code of the organization that issued the document.
  • Owner's signature.

On the cover of the new passport you can see the chip icon. On the back of the cover the name of our country is written in two languages. On the third page the name of the country is written again in Russian and English and is signed by the owner. The fourth page is reserved for a table for entering information about children, but it always remains empty.

All pages of the new passport (except the plastic one) have perforations indicating the document number. On page 45 there is a special holographic security strip.

Biometrics: what is it and why is it needed?


The purpose of collecting biometric data is to identify a person. It is known that all people have several unique parameters: fingerprints, iris pattern. Moreover, they do not change over the years and are never repeated. Also, the biometric characteristics of a person include the geometry of the face and its DNA.

The uniqueness of the characteristics led security officials to believe that they could be used to quickly and accurately determine a person’s identity. This is how the ideas for biometric passports emerged. Since 2007, the European Union has introduced a mandatory requirement to include digitized fingerprints in the passport. In some countries, the chip also stores information about a person's iris, height and eye color.

Gradually, more and more countries around the world are switching to the use of biometric identity documents. Unfortunately, having a biometric passport does not eliminate the need to provide data about your physical parameters in order to obtain visas to some countries, for example, to the Schengen zone or to the UK.

What to choose

Thinking about which document to draw up: old or new. The following arguments can be taken into account. The old document costs less, but is valid for half as long. Children cannot be entered into the new passport, and if there is a need to travel abroad with small children, then it is more profitable to choose a passport of the old format.

The new document was developed using the most modern technologies. Therefore, it has much more degrees of protection and is read much faster by inspection devices. This speeds up the border check process slightly.

The deadlines for registration and rules for using both samples are the same. Therefore, the main arguments when choosing are cost and the possibility of entering information about children.

How to apply

According to Russian rules, to obtain a foreign passport you must present the following set of documents:

  • Application on one sheet, on both sides, to receive a document.
  • Passport of a citizen of the Russian Federation and a copy of all its completed pages.
  • Men from 18 to 27 years old need a military ID or a certificate from the military registration and enlistment office about military registration.
  • A copy of the first page of the old "foreigner".
  • 3 photos (color or black and white), size 3.5x4.5 cm on non-shiny paper.
  • If necessary, an application to retain the old travel document.

To obtain a new type of international passport, you need the same set of documents, excluding photographs. Pictures will be taken at the document submission point using a special device. Electronic fingerprints will also be taken there.

This package of documents is submitted to the federal migration service at the place of registration. The passport is issued within 1 month. To speed up the issuance procedure, if there are special reasons, you can write a special application with documents attached.

The state fee for an old-style international passport is 2 thousand rubles (for children - 1 thousand rubles), for a new type document - 3.5 thousand rubles. (for children – 1.5 thousand rubles).

The choice of the type of travel document abroad is a personal, free choice of every Russian. Today there are no prerequisites for any country to restrict entry for residents of our country on the basis of the fact that they provide an old or new passport. However, the long validity period and greater security of the information of the new document, in our opinion, makes it more attractive.

A biometric passport differs from an old document in the presence of a special microcircuit built into the cover. The electronic medium contains information about the identity of the owner (date of birth, full name), his citizenship, fingerprints, digitized face, passport number and date of issue, signature, expiration date. To quickly identify a biometric passport, the chip icon was placed on the cover. The first page was made thicker due to a plastic insert that contains the chip and the owner’s basic data.

Advantages of a biometric passport

Ukrainians with such a passport can enter the countries of the Schengen zone without opening a visa. This is one of the main advantages of a passport. In addition, it simplifies the procedure for entry and inspection at state borders thanks to automated data reading. In most countries, border guards receive information about tourists using mobile devices. They ask him to attach his index finger and passport to the gadget; the equipment does the rest. This method makes it easy to identify a person. And the risk that a person enters the country using fake documents is reduced - it is almost impossible to forge them. A biometric passport has other advantages:

  • single passport: foreign and internal;
  • issued for 10 years;
  • if lost, no one will be able to use it except the owner.

Where is it issued?

You can apply for such a passport at the departments of the State Migration Service (State Migration Service), regardless of your registration. For maximum convenience of the population, an electronic queue was created on the service’s website. Please note that signing up for the electronic queue is not so easy. New booking dates appear daily at 00:00 and are filled quickly. You can also sign up for the current queue directly at the State Migration Service department. The state enterprise Document also issues biometric foreign passports, but this service costs more there. There are also private agencies now that provide services for the production of biometric passports. In Kyiv - this is Mypassport - http://mypassport.kiev.ua/biometricheskiy-pasport. Prices are slightly higher than state prices, but without queues and bureaucracy, there are urgent options.

Required documents

Ukrainians who are already 16 years old must provide:

  • Ukrainian passport;
  • application form;
  • foreign passports that were issued previously;
  • individual tax number;
  • a document confirming payment of the administrative fee.

Persons under 16 years of age submit the following documents:

  • birth certificate (if available - passport);
  • document confirming payment of the administrative fee.

Persons under 12 years of age submit a birth certificate and parents’ internal passports. You can also submit one photo measuring 10x15 cm (for digitizing the image) and two photos 3.5x4.5 cm. Moreover, the presence of a child when applying for a foreign passport is not necessary, but from the age of 12 it is required, since fingerprints are taken ( if there is consent from the parents). Please note that you do not have to return your old passport with valid visas. Ukrainians can now have 2 foreign passports.

Dates of issue and validity

You are given 20 days to review your application for a biometric passport. Its cost will cost 557 UAH 32 kopecks. But in the application you can indicate that you need a passport urgently, then the period will be reduced to 7 days, and the cost will increase to 810 UAH 32 kopecks. In case of urgent departure, you can issue a passport within 3 days, but you must submit a document confirming the urgency of the trip. The administrative fee for this service is 810 UAH 32 kopecks. You can pay it at a bank branch, at administrative service centers and at terminals installed in the State Migration Service. For children and teenagers, such a passport is issued for 4 years. From the age of 16 you will need to re-register it every 10 years.