I applied last night I had all sorts of trouble getting the chip to read. I tried for several minutes every which way to no avail. My wife applied several days before me, and she had similar issues. I asked her what her trick was, and she said just skip. She had done that and didn’t have any issues getting approved pretty quickly. So I followed her advice, and just skipped, and went through the rest of the process. Everything went through just fine, and I ended up being approved within a minute. I hadn’t even gotten my credit card back in my wallet before I got the approval email. That part was quick and over all the whole process was simple and straightforward overall. (And I even got approved more quickly than she did). Fix the chip reading part of this app, and it gets at least four stars. Looking forward to my trip to the UK in the upcoming months!

We’ve done three passports in a row and despite positioning them the same way for each separate process, it took different times to read the chips and these are passports from the same nationality (presumably the chip is located in the same place) and the same phone was used. For first passport took three tries, the second took about 10, the second took maybe 30 tries and needed to shut down the app once in the midst of it to restart the process from the start. Every time too it failed to read the chip the message would be that the phone or passport were moved even though that wasn’t the case for 99% of the attempts. So this app is in dire need of fixing how it reads the biometric chip as it was a frustrating process. The app should also have a section to enter the authorization’s reference number and maybe some associated info such as the last name or passport number or date of birth to be able to retrieve the ETA and know what the validity is instead of merely needing to go back to my email to find it.

Applying for myself and my significant other - a huge pain compared to the apps for many other countries including African and Asian ones. The scanning app failed numerous times without reflections or obvious problems but eventually was able to get it to work(other countries were quick and easy). Same problem for scanning the RFID chip even though I’ve done it numerous times without problem. Eventually I successfully got the ETA for myself and was happy when applying for my significant other that the scanning and rfid recognition seemed to work much better. Upon submitting the application though I got the “Sorry there’s a problem with the service” error. Have tried for days and it simply doesn’t work and no service ticket response. Numerous web complaints of the same issue. Will have to get another device and try on that. This is a huge failure for something that should be a simple application and which numerous countries likely with lower budgets seem to be able to handle with minimal problems.

As others have pointed out, the chip in US passports is in the inside back cover. What is not mentioned in all reviews is that to successfully scan you need to touch the “CONTINUE” but at the bottom of the page with the animation showing how to scan the passport. Once you do, a smaller black screen will appear that says to scan. You must do this step in order to successfully scan. Slowly slide the phone up or down the inside cover, physically touching the page with the phone. The chip is about half way upSlightly to the right. As you scan watch your phone for the message that the say the chip has been detected and stop moving your phone. Once captured, a message will tell you that it’s been successfully scanned. I had my approval within an hour. Good luck!!