· Written and maintained by Nonimo
To redact an Irish passport card is to black out what the person asking doesn’t need: your place of birth, the issue date, often your date of birth and the card number, and the three machine readable lines on the back. What stays, your name, photo and expiry date, is enough to show who you are.
The tool at the top of this page reads the photo of your Irish Passport Card in your browser and puts a chip on each detail of the front. You choose, chip by chip, what stays readable, and the boxes are solid, not a blur. Your card never leaves your device. It’s one of the passport and licence tools behind Nonimo for Irish firms and practices.
If the copy is going to an agency or an app, you can also write who it is for and the month across it, on our page on watermarking a passport card.
If it’s the passport book you’re sending rather than the card, you can redact the passport copy in the same way, or watermark it with who it is for and the month. For an Irish Residence Permit, there’s a page on watermarking your IRP card.
How to redact a passport card
1. Add a photo of the card
Photograph the card on a plain surface or drop in a scan, as JPG, PNG, WEBP, HEIC or PDF. Crop, straighten or rotate it so the card fills the frame. The tool recognises the front of the Irish Passport Card; on the back, it reads the machine readable lines.
2. Tap what you want hidden
The card opens with everything visible and a chip for each detail. Tap a chip to cover it, tap again to show it, and Show everything brings it all back. Cover the card number or your date of birth and, where the tool has read the machine readable lines, it is covered there too.
3. Download the redacted copy
As PNG, JPG or PDF, with the boxes burned into the pixels and no metadata, so none of the hidden EXIF and GPS details a phone photo carries goes with it. One side at a time: if both sides are wanted, download the back as a second copy.
What to redact on an Irish Passport Card
The front carries the same bilingual labels as the passport, Sloinne/Surname, Náisiúntacht/Nationality and the rest, beside your photo. The Department of Foreign Affairs requires those details to match your passport book, so the card says as much about you as the data page does.
| field | where | on the copy you send |
|---|---|---|
| Surname, forenames, photo | front | visible: this is what they check |
| Date of expiry | front | visible: it shows the card is valid |
| Card number | front, top right | visible only if they have to record it |
| Date of birth | front | covered unless they ask for it |
| Place of birth, date of issue | front | covered |
| The three machine readable lines | back | covered, or don’t send the back |
Fields as printed on the Irish Passport Card; the third column is our advice.
The back gives the front away again
Under ICAO Doc 9303, a card this size carries a machine readable zone of three lines of 30 characters: your name, the card number, nationality, date of birth, sex and expiry. Cover the front carefully and send the back as it is, and almost everything is readable again. If nobody asked for the back, keep it.
Who actually needs the card number
A solicitor, credit union or bank verifying your identity under the Criminal Justice (Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing) Act 2010 will usually record the number. A gym, a sports club or a landlord comparing applicants rarely does, and the Data Protection Commission says proof of identity from numerous prospective tenants before an offer will generally not fit data minimisation. The same question, who needs which detail, comes up before a letter or spreadsheet goes to AI: see which personal details to take out first. Letting agents who draft tenant summaries with AI can read what an estate agency covers before ChatGPT.
For an Irish licence, see the driving licence guide, or redact your Irish driving licence item by item. If the card is going to a chatbot to help with a form, cover everything first; what ChatGPT keeps of your photos explains why.
Common questions
What should I redact on a copy of my Passport Card?
On the front, usually your place of birth, the issue date and often the date of birth; the card number too, unless the recipient has to record it. Keep your name, photo and expiry date visible, since that is what a check looks at. On the back, the three machine readable lines are the part to cover if you send it at all.
How do I hide the card number?
Tap the Card number chip and a solid box covers it. The number is also inside the machine readable lines on the back, and when the tool reads those lines, covering the number covers it there as well. Check first that the recipient doesn't need it: a solicitor or credit union verifying who you are will usually note it.
What are the lines on the back of the Passport Card?
The machine readable zone: three lines of 30 characters, in the card format set out by ICAO Doc 9303. They repeat your name, the card number, nationality, date of birth, sex and expiry date in a form a reader takes in at once. Redacting the front and sending the back untouched gives most of it away again.
Do I need to send the back of the card?
Only if they ask for it. Most checks need the photo, the name and the dates on the front. If the back is wanted, redact it as its own image. The tool reads the machine readable lines on the back, so covering your name, card number or date of birth covers those details in the lines too; to black out all three lines, use Redact by hand.
Is the card number the same as my passport number?
No. The card has its own number, separate from the book's, and the Department of Foreign Affairs says the personal details on the card must match the book. That is why a card copy deserves the same care as a passport copy: it identifies you just as fully, and it adds a second document number.
Is it better to blur or black out the card?
Black it out. A blur on a sharp phone photo can leave digits readable, and a small card is often photographed close up. The tool lays solid boxes burned into the image, so in the downloaded file there is nothing underneath to recover, no layer to lift and no annotation to remove.
What if something on the card isn't covered by a chip?
Use Redact by hand. Drag across any area of the photo, or run your finger over it on a phone, and that area is covered: a signature, a reflection showing a detail, or anything else in the frame you'd rather keep back. Undo removes the last box, and Start again clears your boxes.
Does my card get uploaded anywhere?
No. The Passport Card is read and redacted in your browser and never leaves your device. The file you download, as PNG, JPG or PDF, has the boxes burned into the pixels and carries no metadata from the original photo, so no GPS position and no phone model go with it.