An ever increasing number of people are travelling from one country to another, from one continent to the other. Borders are becoming open; air travel is getting extremely popular. The backside of these positive developments is an increase in illegal immigration and terrorists attacks, using identity fraud as a means for these purposes.

Biometric visas and electronic residence permits are becoming a necessity to efficiently control travellers entering and leaving the territory – without creating cumbersome line-ups.

OeSD has developed a range of visa solutions, including machine-readable visa stickers equipped with state-of-the-art security features for numerous clients in Europe and on other continents. These products are characterized by a particularly high degree of forgery protection and high-security production processes.

Following the European Union’s regulation to harmonize the European residence permits, in the last months OeSD was preparing the introduction of the eResidence Permit (eRP) for the Republic of Austria.

The new Austrian biometric electronic residence permit was introduced by the Austrian Ministry of the Interior on 1 July, 2011. This new smart card solution fully complies with EU regulation and incorporates two biometrics (face and fingerprint).