An online visa application service is an app or website that shows each country's visa rules, checks your documents and books your appointment, so that you can apply for a visa without visiting an agent. A visa is the permission a country gives a foreign citizen to enter it. Atlys is one such service, built for Indian travellers.
Indians apply for visas more often than most travellers. Most countries require Indian passport holders to apply in advance, and the rules differ for each country. They say which documents are needed, how recent each must be and what size the photo must be. A small mistake, such as a photo with the wrong background, can lead to a refusal and a lost fee.
The service works in four steps. First, it asks where and when you are travelling, and it shows the rules for that country. Second, it collects your documents and checks them. It reads each scanned page with intelligent document processing (IDP), software that turns a scan into fields that a system can check. Third, it checks that your passport is genuine and that your selfie matches the passport photo, through identity verification (IDV). Fourth, it submits the application and collects the visa fee through a payment gateway.
Take, for example, a software tester in Indore applying for a tourist visa to France, for a two-week trip in May. The service shows the list: a passport valid for at least three months after the trip, three months of bank statements, a hotel booking, a flight booking and travel insurance. She uploads the scans. The software finds two problems. The background of her photo is grey, not white. And her bank statement covers only two months. She fixes both. The service then finds a free appointment at a visa application centre in Mumbai, where her fingerprints will be taken. It tells her that the decision usually takes about 15 days after the appointment.
Some countries now issue visas fully online. The traveller uploads the documents, the country checks them online, and the visa arrives by email, sometimes within minutes. This is called an e-visa. For these countries, the service can complete the whole process in the app.
These checks are a form of KYC, applied to travel. Large companies that send staff abroad for work use immigration management software instead. It tracks the work visas and permits of thousands of employees. The step after the visa is to carry one checked identity through the airline and the border, which is called digital travel credentials.