Over the last five years, those who have had to renew a passport have often faced the bottlenecks that came after record numbers of people started planning and taking trips amid re-opening borders.
Only at the end of December 2023 did standard processing times return to the pre-pandemic normal of six to eight weeks from what, at its peak, could take as long as six months.
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The long wait times are exacerbated by the fact that any passport that is to be renewed still needs to be either sent in by mail or brought to a passport agency. In an effort to test whether greater digitalization will prevent such bottlenecks, the U.S. State Department is testing a pilot program in which a limited number of people will be able to renew their passports online.
This is how to (and who can) renew a passport online
Americans who are older than 25, have a 10-year passport issued no later than 2009 and are not requesting to make any changes to their name or gender will be able to go on the State Department’s website around noon Eastern Time each day for one of a limited number of slots for an online renewal.
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Once the unspecified number of slots fills up for the day, the application will stop being available. It will cost the same $130 as a regular renewal while expedited services are currently not available online; the State Department recommends it only for those who are not planning any international travel in the next eight weeks.
“The goal of online passport renewal is to save Americans time and effort, making it more convenient to renew their U.S. passports,” a senior State Department official said of the new renewal option.
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Will the State Department ever make the online option permanent?
At different points in 2022 and 2023, the State Department launched several online renewal betas for several months at a time. According to its numbers, over 500,000 people were able to successfully renew their passports in this way but they have stopped short of making this option permanent over lawmakers’ “concern that technical difficulties during the pilot caused uncertainty among applicants and questioned State Department oversight of the program.”
Another benefit of the online application is that one can upload the photograph that will be used inside the passport online and does not have to submit the old passport by mail; once the new passport is approved, the old one will be canceled digitally (all U.S. passports issued in the last 15 years now have a digital chip that connects it to one’s online data) and be invalid for travel.
The State Department has not specified how long the online renewal option will be available this time around but did say that it plans to monitor how smoothly the process goes in order to “track any issues that arise and address them quickly and continuously improve the experience for the American people."
The government agency also said that the “strong demand” and public interest in being able to renew passports online will also continue to influence the agency’s future planning decisions.
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