Jeddah: Fingerprints have been made mandatory for people from five countries to come to Saudi Arabia on Umrah visa. It applies to five countries namely Britain, Tunisia, Kuwait, Bangladesh and Malaysia. Ministry of Hajj Umrah tweeted that ‘fingerprints’ must be registered to complete visa procedures. This decision is to facilitate the admission process.
Fingerprints should be registered by downloading the ‘Saudi Visa Bio’ application on smart phones. After entering the application, the registration procedures are to determine the type of visa, read the passport instantly, upload a photo of the face on the phone camera, and scan the fingerprints of all 10 fingers using the phone camera.
The main advantage of this system is that with the early registration of fingerprints for the pilgrims to get the Umrah visa, it is possible to complete the travel procedures quickly and avoid congestion when they reach the Saudi entry gates. Based on the earlier implementation of this system for Hajj pilgrims from many countries and its success, the method of pre-registration of biometric features is going to be implemented for Umrah pilgrims as well.