Jenni Kayne/AP/File
U.S. passport covers are displayed on Dec. 11, 2021, in Tigard, Oregon.
CNN
—
A State Department spokesman said the department began piloting an updated online passport renewal program on Wednesday.
A spokesman for the department said the program will accept a small number of online applications each day for several months, tracking and addressing any issues, and gradually increasing the number of applications accepted over time.
The move comes more than two years after President Joe Biden signed an executive order allowing online passport renewals for US travelers. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said last year that the State Department had suspended its experimental online renewal platform “to ensure that we can fine-tune and improve it before rolling it out at scale.”
Access to the program is only available for a limited time each day at noon Eastern Time and will end when the limit is reached. Eligible applicants will need to create a login.gov account to use the program.
“Allowing the public to participate is important to monitor how the site works at scale in a live environment,” a department spokesman said, but added separately that “this beta version does not mean that everyone who wants to apply online will be able to do so on the day they choose.”
The processing time for online passport renewal programs is the same as for renewals by mail. Expedited or urgent travel passport services are not available when renewing online.
The department said in December that processing times for passport applications had returned to pre-pandemic levels, but the rollout of the beta version of the online update program came during the busy summer travel season.
Blinken noted in March 2023 that the U.S. had increased staff and resources to keep up with demand, and said at the time that he expected 65% of passport renewal customers to be able to renew online once the program was fully operational.
CNN’s Jennifer Hansler contributed to this report.
