The People’s Republic of Bangladesh has announced the enrollment and issuance service for the new ePassport in all its foreign missions worldwide. The ePassport has been designed to be forgery-proof and the required infrastructure is being provided by Veridos, a specialist in integrated identity solutions. Veridos began equipping Bangladesh’s domestic passport offices with the necessary infrastructure in 2020.
In the presence of Asaduzzaman Khan, Minister of Home Affairs of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh, and officials from the Department of Immigration and Passports, Bangladesh inaugurated the new ePassport service at its embassy in Berlin on September 5. From now on, all Bangladeshi citizens can apply for ePassports in Berlin. In the upcoming months, Bangladeshis will also be able to obtain their electronic passports at all of Bangladesh’s other 75 foreign missions.
Veridos is responsible for the entire roll-out of the ePassport infrastructure. This starts with the pre-configuration and shipping of the enrollment and issuance infrastructure to all embassies worldwide. Veridos then sets up the infrastructure and trains the embassy staff.
Citizens of Bangladesh can apply for their electronic passport through an online portal. For large embassies with a high volume of ePassport requests, the online portal features appointment scheduling for the enrollment of biometric data such as fingerprints, facial image and iris scans. Applicants can thus avoid long waiting times. In the future, there will also be the option to pay passport fees online via the portal.
The ePassport documents are produced and personalized in Dhaka (Bangladesh) and shipped to the embassies. Through the ePassport online portal, applicants can view status updates and check if their ID document is ready for pick-up.
The new ePassport was introduced in Bangladesh itself in January 2020, replacing the machine-readable passport. Veridos installed the new ePassport infrastructure in all 72 domestic passport offices in Bangladesh throughout 2020 and in 2021. In addition, Veridos is also supplying the People’s Republic of Bangladesh with 50 eGates for automated border control at airports and major land crossings.
