MRZ

A machine-readable passport, abbreviated as MRP, is a passport format, a machine-readable travel document (MRTD) with data on the identification page encoded in an optical character recognition format. Many countries began issuing machine-readable travel documents in the 1980s.

Most travel passports worldwide are MRPs. They are standardised according to “Document 9303” of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), and confirmed by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) as the ISO/IEC 7501-1 standard, and have a special machine-readable zone (MRZ), usually at the bottom of the identification page at the beginning of the passport. “Document 9303” describes three types of documents. Typically, passports are issued in the “Type 3” format, while national identity cards and passport cards usually use the “Type 1” format.

The machine-readable zone of a Type 3 travel document spans two lines, and each line has 44 characters. The following information must be provided in the zone: name, passport number, nationality, date of birth, gender, and passport expiry date. There is much optional additional information, which usually depends on the country. The machine-readable zone of a Type 1 travel document spans three lines, and each line has 30 characters.