What is a machine-readable passport?

A machine-readable passport has certain biographical data entered on the data page in accordance with standards set by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), Doc 9303, Part 1. These standards address issues such as the size of the passport and photograph, arrangement of data fields and the two lines of printed machine-readable data that appear at the bottom of the page. Machine-readable passports can be read by scanning the two lines of printed data through special readers. Below is an example of how the biographical data page in a machine-readable passport might look:



New Kuwaiti passports are machine-readable. You should contact your country’s embassy, consulate or passport issuing agency if you have any doubts related to whether your passport is machine-readable.