If you’re planning to visit the United Kingdom from the United States, you need to apply for an ETA (“electronic travel authorisation”) before your visit. It’s like an e-visa, but somehow not a visa. It only costs 10 GBP (About $13 USD) and it lasts for 2 years. Note that while this is very similar to the European Union’s ETIAS, ETA is needed for the UK while ETIAS will soon be needed for the rest of Europe (thanks Brexit).
I have a trip to London coming up and so I applied. While it didn’t take long, I was surprised by how challenging it was to get through a couple of the steps in the process. I’ll walk you through it below so that you can breeze past those issues. If you decide not to read further, at least remember this one thing (which the UK doesn’t seem to know): in US passports, the scannable electronic chip is in the inside back cover.
The first step is to find the smartphone app called “UK ETA”. The image below shows what it should look like in the app store:
When you start the app, it suggests that the process can be done in three easy steps:
And the first steps were super easy:
But then I got to the “confirm your identity” step. This proved to be a little challenging (for me)…
You can’t see this in the static image above, but the app showed the cell phone moving up and down over the passport’s front cover in order to scan the passport’s electronic chip. It didn’t work the first time. It didn’t work the second time. It didn’t work the eighteenth time. The app suggested turning over the passport and scanning the back. That didn’t work either. Finally, I Googled the problem and learned that in US passports, the electronic chip is in the inside back cover. I opened my passport to the end and scanned the inside back cover. It worked on my first try. Done!
Next it was necessary to take a selfie. That should have been easy, right? The problem was that the app said to take the selfie with nothing behind me and no shadows on my face. I did my best to find such a spot for the selfie, but finding the right combination of a blank wall and even lighting was challenging. I tried with uneven lighting, but the app kept rejecting my photos. Finally I turned on the selfie-camera flash on my phone. That was the ticket. It got rid of the shadows that the UK ETA app was so resistant to.
Finally I got to the payment screen. I used Apple Pay and the payment went through without any issue.
Seconds after finalizing payment, I received an email saying that my ETA application was approved! Since authorization is tied to the passport, It’s not necessary to show the ETA approval when entering the UK.
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