US launches online passport renewal service

(CNN) — Americans who are renewing their passports will now be able to do so online, a top State Department official announced Wednesday.

“This is a new service which will allow Americans to pay to upload a photo and to apply completely online, with no need to appear in person or to send documents through the mail,” Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs Rena Bitter said, noting that it “will be available 24/7.”

The service is open to adults who are renewing a regular 10-year passport that has expired within the past five years or expires in the coming year. At this point, the online passport renewal service is only accessible for Americans with a US address.

The service will be accessible at travel.state.gov, and customers “will be able to walk you through a few questions to make sure that you’re eligible to use the service,” Bitter said.

“We estimate that up to 5 million Americans a year will be able to use the service,” she said, adding that the agency intends to expand it.

“This is not going to be the last thing that we do. We want to see how this goes, and then we’ll start looking at ways to continue to make this service available to more American citizens in the coming months and years,” Bitter said.

The program has been in beta testing for several months, she said, and “we’ve been getting very good customer reviews.”

The processing time for passport renewals is six to eight weeks – “a historic low,” Bitter said.

“We don’t expect to have a different service standard for people who apply online versus people who apply by mail. We just want to make sure that we give the American people a choice to be able to do either,” she said.

“The benefit of online passport renewal is that it’s a more convenient service,” Bitter said.

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