Quick Project Facts
- Product: Combo Smart e-passport reader
- Quantity: 3,000+ pcs.
- Locations: worldwide
- Application area: registering travelers’ data, visa issuance for Hajj, Umrah, Enjaz
All pilgrims traveling to Mecca, Saudi Arabia for their pilgrimages like Hajj, Umrah, or Enjaz, have to be registered at MOFA (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Saudi Arabia) and need a special visa to start their journey. These administration processes are aided by passport readers, automatically capturing personal data from ID documents. Read below to learn the details.
About Hajj and Umrah Pilgrimage
The Umrah is an Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, the holiest city for Muslims, that can be undertaken at any time of the year—in contrast to the Hajj, which has specific dates according to the Islamic lunar calendar. Only Umrah has an attendance of more than 20 million persons yearly, almost a third of them coming from abroad, according to the statistics from 2019.
The Challenge
According to the regulations, pilgrims need a special visa and their data has to be submitted to the relevant authorities, such as MOFA, Ehaj, Bab Umrah, Gama, Tawaf, or Way To Umrah websites. One pilgrim’s data takes more than 10 minutes to collect and submit, which remarkably slows the administration process—and often includes mistyped characters as well, serving for potential future issues.
The Solution
Travel offices therefore started using passport reader devices that automatically capture ID document data, so there is no need for manual typing and correcting mistyped characters. The devices digitalize all printed data, and in addition, digital data as well since many of today’s IDs and passports are e-IDs and e-passports, including a contactless chip with digital data on them.
More About Passport Reading
The mentioned device is a purpose-built scanner that takes images of the ID document performs OCR (optical character recognition) on the scanned images and captures RFID data from the chip. In Hajj systems, all these 4 types of data are gathered:
- MRZ
MRZ is the abbreviation of Machine Readable Zone, a standardized data on passports and IDs, containing personal and document data – written with Latin characters. A simple & compact ID scanner like Combo Scan is sufficient for reading smaller ID documents and MRZ on a passport (not recommended for advanced passport reading, though.)
- VIZ
VIZ is the abbreviation of Visual Inspection Zone, which is not standardized and includes various data of the document holder and the document itself, written with the local alphabet.
- Face portrait
It is the photo that links the document to the person – the system automatically crops the face portrait, no matter what document type is present.
- RFID data
The device creates secure access to the contactless chip of the e-document and then gathers all digital data.
Benefits of Using Dedicated Hajj & Umrah Pilgrimage Software
Some travel offices take extra benefit from special Hajj software to register pilgrims. These software products can automatically submit personal data to the mentioned authorities, saving a lot of time during the administration.
Another advantage is that many of them are compatible with passport readers, such as the Combo Smart passport reader.
This way, the whole process, including data input and data transfer takes only seconds instead of the lengthy traditional way. A good example of such a Hajj system is Hajonsoft.
More About the Product
Please note that Combo Smart is a discontinued product that has been replaced by Adaptive Recognition’s latest achievement on the ID reader market, the Osmond passport & ID scanner.
