Visas Continue to Go Digital

In June of this year, the European Council provisionally agreed on rules to digitise the Schengen visa procedure ¹ (see sister publication Holography News™, October 2023). The council has now approved the digitisation of the visa process, signalling a further move away from physical visa stickers.

The trend towards the dematerialisation of the concept of the visa already began a few decades ago. As early as 1986, the US launched a pilot of the Visa Waiver Program (VWP), allowing citizens of certain eligible countries to enter the US for short visits without obtaining a visa.

Some years later, in 2009 the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) was introduced as a mandatory online application system for travellers under the VWP. Although, technically, this is a visa waiver, rather than a visa application process, it was an early example of the dematerialisation of the visa. Why would you need to print, issue and apply a visa vignette when you could associate the right of controlled entry into a country digitally?