You can now pick up your e-Residency digital ID card in South Korea or Romania
There are now 41 locations around the world where you can can collect an e-Residency digital ID card. Even more are planned.
좋은 소식
Ştiri bune!
Good news!
The Estonian Police and Border Guard has added two new locations for collecting e-Residency digital ID cards — Seoul in the Republic of Korea and Bucharest in Romania. You can now select these options from the drop down list of pick up locations on the e-Residency application form.
South Korea and Romania are already home to large numbers of e-residents, but until now they have had to travel to nearby countries to collect their digital ID cards.
It’s important that every e-resident collects their digital ID card in person at an official location because they are receiving a secure government-issued digital identity, which then provides access to Estonia’s public e-services and transparent business environment. The digital ID is provided inside an e-Residency ‘starter kit’, which also contains your USB card reader and your PIN codes.
In the case of Romania, the Estonian Embassy in Bucharest is now ready to issue these to e-residents. This means that every Estonian Embassy around the world now serves e-residents.
Estonia’s embassies work hard to support e-Residency, but it’s obviously not possible for them to be conveniently located for everyone who wants to join our new digital nation. As a result, the Estonian Police and Border Guard revealed that the first ‘e-Residency centre’ would be opened in South Korea.
Many countries partner with third party service providers to issue official documents at ‘visa centres’ so this is the first pilot project to use one as an ‘e-Residency centre’. If successful, the project can be expanded to many more locations around the world where there is currently high demand for e-Residency, but difficulty reaching an existing pick up location.
There are good reasons for selecting South Korea as the first location. In addition to the high existing demand there for e-Residency, the Republics of Korea and Estonia are partners in the D5 group of advanced digital nations. South Koreans are highly entrepreneurial, enjoy one of the world’s fastest internet speeds and are more likely to shop online than anywhere else in the world.
We believe e-Residency provides the best way to run a trusted location-independent business with minimal cost and hassle entirely online from anywhere in the world. For South Koreans, there is considerable interest in how it can also be used to access the EU business environment.
If you apply now then you will be among the very first e-residents to collect your digital ID card from the VFS Global Visa Application Center in Seoul when it opens for the initial testing period in December. The grand opening will then take place at the start of next year so watch this space for more details about events in South Korea and information about e-Residency in Korean.
Here is a full list of e-Residency pick up locations now available:
- Canberra, Australia
- Vienna, Austria
- Baku, Azerbaijan
- Minsk, Belarus
- Brussels, Belgium
- Ottawa, Canada
- Beijing, China
- Prague, Czechia
- Copenhagen, Denmark
- Cairo, Egypt
- Helsinki, Finland
- Paris, France
- Tbilsi, Georgia
- Berlin, Germany
- Athens, Greece
- New Delhi, India
- Dublin, Ireland
- Tel Aviv, Israel
- Rome, Italy
- Tokyo, Japan
- Astana, Kazakhstan
- Riga, Latvia
- Vilnius, Lithuania
- The Hague, Netherlands
- Oslo, Norway
- Warsaw, Poland
- Lisbon, Portugal
- Bucharest, Romania
- Moscow, Russia
- Pskov, Russia
- St Petersburg, Russia
- Singapore
- Seoul, South Korea
- Madrid, Spain
- Stockholm, Sweden
- Ankara, Turkey
- London, UK
- Kiev, Ukraine
- New York, USA
- San Francisco, USA
- Washington DC, USA
Start your application here at e-resident.gov.ee.
