A step-by-step guide to automated data capture from passports

Capturing data from passports is challenging primarily for two reasons - first being multiple data points to capture, and the second reason is passports could contain foreign languages. Another challenge is ensuring security and privacy - because passports contain highly sensitive personal information, it causes legal and ethical concerns about capturing and storing this data.

In this article, we discuss the challenges involved with passport data capture and how you can automate reading data from passports.

Let's jump right into it:-

‍Challenges with manual data capture from passports

The process of manually capturing data from passports come with challenges of increased cost, time consumption, and inaccurate data entry:-

• Passports are sent over emails, different apps in different file formats and sizes.
• A team of data entry operators captures data from passports and feeds into the system -  this process is slow and inaccurate.
• Often the shared images are substandard and low in resolution which makes it difficult for traditional data capture technology to extract data from passports.
• Passports can have varying structures based on origin of year and country.

Challenges with traditional semi-automated data capture

Some of these organizations still use traditional OCR to capture data from passports. While this is an upgrade from manual data capture, it still is insufficient for these reasons:-

• They don’t work well with custom data where the user needs to capture specific context-based data.
• They need a considerable amount of pre-processing as the images received can be skewed, rotated, and low in resolution.
• These solutions need to be customized and trained for any updates and changes in passports.
• Traditional OCR solutions are difficult to scale as they need to be trained for every little change.

The solution to all the challenges mentioned above is to use AI-based Intelligent document processing solution to capture information from passports. Let’s see how Docsumo does it:-

How to capture data from passports using Docsumo?

Let’s see how Docsumo’s automated PDF reader works in 5 simple steps:-

Step #1 - Uploading the documents

The first step is to upload the Passports received from applicants. These files can be uploaded 

Step #2 - Auto-classification

After passports are uploaded, they’re classified for passport-front and passport-back. This document classification happens to smoothen the process of capturing data from both ends of passports.

Step #3 - Fraud detection

After auto-classification, the uploaded documents are filtered for black and white images, scanned images, cropped images, and a photo of the photo. If any of these issues are detected, the red flag is raised and the document is sent for manual verification. 

Step #4 - Data extraction

Once uploaded Passports are found genuine, they’re pushed for data extraction.

Fields captured from Passports are as follows:-

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Step #5 - Data verification 

Captured data is validated to improve field-level accuracy. If any exceptions are found, they’re held for manual review. Docsumo offers 95%+ straight through processing passports, that means you don’t even have to look at these documents 95 out of 100 times, and the data is captured accurately and pushed into the database.

Benefits of using Docsumo for intelligent data extraction from passports

Docsumo eliminates the challenges involved with manual and semi-automated data capture workflow, and offers these benefits to the users:-

1. Docsumo is easy to use and integrate within your workflow. 
2. Docsumo automates the entire process end-to-end starting from receiving passports from multiple sources to pushing captured and validated data into the database.
3. Docsumo is highly accurate with 99%+ field-level accuracy, and 95%+ straight through processing.
4. Docsumo can be integrated seamlessly with their existing database.
5. You control how your data is saved with Docsumo.
6. Docsumo is SOC-2 complaint ensuring your data is highly secure with us.

Start your 14-day free trial with Docsumo and automate passport data capture today!

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