The United States Department of State announced that
Americans can now renew their passports online.
According to Reuters.com, the State Department has been
running a beta program allowing U.S. citizens to renew their passports online,
and the success of the two-month
test has resulted in enough confidence to open the program to all Americans.
To accommodate the surge in people renewing online, the
State Department revealed that it hired additional staff, brought in experts,
and improved its website to handle processing passport renewals and issuing
travel visas.
In total, around 200,000 Americans participated in the beta
program.
“Tomorrow online passport renewal will go live for the first
time ever for the entire country,” Deputy Secretary of State Richard Verma said.
The State Department estimated that nearly 50 percent of passport
renewals will be done online soon. To take advantage of the service, U.S. citizens
must be in the country, and passports that have been expired for more than five
years are not permitted to be renewed online.
While some Americans hope the new service will speed up the passport
renewal process, Verma said it “won’t necessarily be faster.”
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