Originally Posted by mabuhay_2000
There is no global standard for passport design and security features.
The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) issues passport standards which are treated as recommendations to national governments. The size of passports normally comply with ISO/IEC 7810 ID-3 standard, which specifies a size of 125 × 88 mm (4.921 × 3.465 in). This size is the B7 format.
Machine-readable passport standards have been issued by the ICAO, with an area set aside where most of the information written as text is also printed in a manner suitable for optical character recognition.
Biometric passports (or e-Passports) have an embedded contactless smart card chip in order to conform to ICAO standards. The chips contain data about the passport holder, a photograph in digital format and data about the passport itself.