Passport Machine Readable Zone

The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) is responsible for setting up standards for Machine Readable Travel Documents (MRTD). MRTD makes it easy for automated travel documents checking. It’s much faster and less tends to make mistakes than manual input. 

MRTD have a Machine Readable Zone (MRZ) at the bottom. These MRZes are printed in the monospace font OCR-B. Passport is included in MRTD. It has two lines and each line has 44 characters. The following picture shows the pattern of a passport:

And here is another example of MRZ:

Wintone Passport Reader is ICAO standard MRZ reader, it extract users’ name, nationality, sex, birthday, expiry date and other information for machine readable zone. Apart from this, it can also read multiple document types: visas, ID cards and some driver license. Until now, there are over 90 countries and areas issue and use e-passport (namely digital passport) that are complied with the International Civil Aviation Organization’s (ICAO) Doc 9303 specification. Wintone designed and developed Passport Reader with high-precision OCR algorithm and barcode technology that can be used in a wide range of area.

Contact:

Email: sujing@wintone.com.cm

Skype: sujingjemma@gmail.com

Top 5 Most Powerful Passports around the World 2016

Last month, as Britain voted to leave the European Union, a large number of people in Northern Ireland rush to apply for Irish passport, which would allow them to remain EU citizens. Irish passports have been ranked the 5^th powerful passports in the world.

Passport is a reliable proof of identity. It stands for the identity of the holder during international travel. Many countries allow entry to holders of passport of other countries, but sometimes a visa is also required. Here, according to how many countries passport allows visa-free entry, we found out the 5 most powerful passports in the world:

5^th:

Greece, Ireland and Japan

Passport holders of these countries can travel to 154 countries with a visa.

4^th:

Singapore, Luxembourg, Austria, Portugal and USA

Passport holders of these countries can travel to 155 countries with a visa.

3^rd:

Denmark, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium, South Korea and Norway

Passport holders of these countries can travel to 156 countries with a visa.

2^nd:

Finland, Switzerland, France, Spain and UK

Passport holders of these countries can travel to 157 countries with a visa.

1^st:

Germany and Sweden

Their citizens can travel to 158 countries without any visa.

What is OCR?

As you seen these words on screen, your eyes and brain are carrying out optical character recognition without you even noticing. Your eyes are recognizing the patterns of light and dark that make up the characters printed on the screen and your brain is using those to figure out what I’m trying to say. Computer can do this too, but at first it needs an “eye”(an optical scanner or a digital camera). And then OCR will turn the picture taking by this “eye” into text.

Once the printed page is in machine readable form, you can save a lot of energy to do manual input, and the computer will do this for you in few seconds. For example, during the hotel check-in, hotel receptionists have to put your information into registration forms word by word, it’s very slow, and sometimes the staff will make mistakes. Wintone passport reader offers most advanced hotel check in check out solution with full automation of hotel check in check out process.

Wintone is one of the world’s leading OCR based software developers, OEM hardware manufacturers of OCR-related products. Our software development has been focusing on OCR text recognition for passport, business card, ID card, bank card, driving License, automatic number plate and other documents. Our main product passport reader can read multiple travel document, including all ICAO standard passport and IDs and it also reads South east countries IDs and New Zealand driving license. Wintone passport scanner helps in two ways, it fill full ID information to the system automatically and at the same time it keep track of ID copy permanently on folio. The guests’ images get stored permanently with each individual folio and you can retrieve full ID copy any time at later date. Complete taking image of ID and extract all data get completed in less than 2-3.

Key Specifications:

1) ICAO Doc 9303 specification (Part1-4);
2) OCR processing;
3) RFID reading (ID card and e-Passport);
4) 1D & 2D barcode reading;
5) Illumination: Visible and IR image;
6) Sensor: CMOS 3.0 Megapixels;
7) Resolution: 400DPI;
8) Providing Software development kit;
9) Designed for OEM integration & optimized for self service solutions
10) Larger scanning window improves the images for KIOSKs;
11) Customized development all travel documents recognition from the worldwide; currently, it can recognize e-Passport, passport, Visa, Driving license, ID card and so on;

Applications:
Embassies
Border crossings
Public securities
Exit and Entry Management Bureau
Frontier Inspection Station
Local police station
Airports, Train or Bus Terminals
Hotels, Banks, and Travel agencies

If you are interested in Wintone Passport Reader, please contact me.

Email: sujing@wintone.com.cn
Skype ID: sujingjemma@gmail.com