Singapore expands passport-free biometric clearance

At Singapore’s bus halls of Woodlands and Tuas checkpoints, travellers will soon be able to enjoy passport-less clearance using face or iris biometrics, in addition to Marina Bay Cruise Centre Singapore (MBCCS).

Passport-less clearance will be replaced by QR code clearance at land checkpoints, and token-less clearance at air and sea checkpoints. The implementation of passport-less clearance at these locations will start from December 16.

Trials of the selected automated lanes and Special Assistance Lanes (SALs) commenced from November 21, at the arrival and departure bus halls of Tuas and Woodlands checkpoints. More than 48,000 travellers had participated in the trials as of December 1. Feedback from the trials allowed Singapore’s Immigration & Checkpoints Authority (ICA) to finetune and improve the QR code clearance experience for bus travellers, according to the authority.

Tuas checkpoint will be the first to get QR code clearance from December 16, while ICA is aiming for completion of implementation at both land checkpoints by mid-January 2025. ICA is urging all travellers at land checkpoints to use the QR code for faster and more convenient immigration clearance. More information can be found on the ICA website here.

Singapore Changi Airport went fully passport-free with biometric clearance in October.

Meanwhile, on the Malaysian and Singapore border a mystery border control outage caused severe delays. The problem started around midday on Sunday, at a very busy checkpoint at Johor Bahru’s Sultan Iskander Building. The glitch shut down biometric border control gates and  caused travellers trying to cross between Johor Bahru and Singapore to wait up to four hours in line. Immigration officers were forced to clear travellers manually.

Malaysia’s biometric e-gates are supplied by Datasonic.

Extra lanes were opened to relieve the congestion, and ten hours after the delays began operations were declared back to normal. The border crossing is one of the busiest in the world, with around 350,000 people using the route each day, along with more than 100,000 vehicles. The outage mostly affected people travelling by bus, which is some 45 percent of people coming into Singapore, according ICA’s December 2023 statistics. The cause of the outage remains unknown. The border crossing system was recently revamped with the QR code-based system.

The Johor Bahru checkpoint reportedly settled on using the MyBorderPass app in the bus lane entry the week before the outage, according to The Star, following a period trialling other apps. MyBorderPass currently supports QR codes but will add face biometrics at an unspecified later date.

Malaysia, which shares land and maritime borders with Brunei, Indonesia and Thailand and maritime boundaries with the Philippines, Singapore and Vietnam has been overhauling its border controls with an emphasis on biometrics. The QR codes and facial recognition systems are part of a larger border tech update.

Article Topics

biometrics  |  border control  |  face biometrics  |  Malaysia  |  QR code  |  Singapore