State Department launches beta program for people to renew their passports online

The State Department has launched the beta version of a new program that allows Americans to renew their passports online instead of doing it by physical mail.

To qualify, a passport holder needs to be 25 or older, live in the U.S., not be traveling internationally until at least eight weeks after the renewal application is submitted, and not have changed gender, name, birthdate or place of birth since the last passport renewal.

In addition, the existing passport must be a regular tourist passport, must have had a 10-year validity period and must have been issued between 2009 and 2015. The process is good only for regular tourist passports.

Photos uploaded online for a renewal application have to be in the JPEG format and some forms of photo are banned — selfies, digitally scanned photos and photos of a second, already printed photo.

Each day, the online renewal system will open at about 1 p.m. Eastern time, according to The Wall Street Journal, and will close once the daily limit of renewal applications is reached. The State Department did not specify how many applications the system can handle daily.

The daily limiting of applications will continue for the next few months as the system is tested. Applications can be saved and finished later; each applicant has 30 days to complete and submit the renewal application.

Passport books can be renewed for new passport books, and the same for passport cards or for renewal of both documents at once. However, someone with a passport book cannot use online renewal to acquire a passport card and vice versa.

Passports renewed online will be processed in six to eight weeks after the application is received, the same length of time as renewals done by mail.

The State Department renewed more than 565,000 passports during the pilot of the online renewal system, according to the Journal.

Americans who are traveling internationally in less than eight weeks and need a passport expedited have to renew by mail. Americans who need to travel in less than three weeks need to make an appointment at a passport center, according to the State Department’s travel website.