The issuance of new-generation biometric passports in Armenia will begin on November 1, announced Minister of Internal Affairs Arpine Sargsyan. According to her, the documents will be equipped with embedded electronic chips, allowing foreign border services to automatically and significantly faster obtain information about the passport holder.

Sargsyan noted that currently, Armenian passports have to be manually checked at the border by flipping through pages. The new format should significantly speed up the procedure: data will be read electronically, and the probability of errors in identifying the document owner will approach zero. The process itself, according to the Minister of Internal Affairs, will take only a few seconds.

The introduction of biometric passports is linked not only to the modernization of documents but also to Armenia's international obligations. As Sargsyan emphasized, the transition to new-generation passports is one of the important requirements within the framework of Armenia's visa liberalization process with the European Union.