What is Machine-readable passport?
[[File:Mustermann Reisepass 2017.jpg|thumb|Sample of a photo page of a German passport. The two lines at the bottom encode the machine readable information.]] A '''machine-readable passport''' is a [[passport]] that has information that can be read by a [[machine]]. Usually, this information is stored in one or two lines, which encode some of the information in machine readable form. The information is then extracted using [[optical character recognition]]. Usually, this is the [[Given name|given names]], [[family name]], [[date of birth]], [[sex]], and [[validity]] of the travel document. Machine-readable passports (or machine-readable travel documents) have been used since the 1980s. Today, most passports, and travel documents are machine readable. Newer machine-readable passports also store some extra information (such as [[Biometrics|biometrical data]], like a [[fingerprint]]) on a [[microchip]]. The basic idea behind the introduction of machine-readable travel documents was to speed up passport control at the borders. {{Tech-stub}} [[Category:Identification documents]] [[Category:Passports]] [[Category:Biometrics]]