Passport Card?! What is it? Do You Need It? Is It Worth The Cost?

So do you need a U.S. passport card to travel internationally, and is it worth the $30? Well, understanding exactly what a passport card is will help you determine if you ultimately need one. So what is a U.S. passport card? Well, let's compare it against a passport book to better understand. Well, first of all, a passport card and a passport book have a lot of similarities. First of all, both of them are available for international travel. You apply in roughly the same way using a DS-11 for first-time applicants. You can actually apply for them together at the exact same time, and they will both be valid for 10 years. So what is the passport card? Well, if you ask the United States government, they're going to tell you that the passport card is a wallet-sized travel document that can only be used to re-enter the United States at land border crossings and sea ports of entry from Canada, Mexico, places in the Caribbean, and Bermuda. Now, the card provides a less expensive, smaller, and convenient alternative to the passport book for those who travel frequently to these destinations by land or by sea, and the passport card cannot be used for international travel by air. So specifically, this card was designed for people who live near the northern or southern borders of the United States. They either travel frequently for work between the two countries, or they visit family on both sides quite often. These are the people who would want to be using a passport card most often. So what is a passport book? It looks like this right here. It's also available for international travel. It's a small blue book. It includes a lot of the same identifying information as the passport card, but it also comes with some additional pages for visa stamps. So the biggest difference between the passport card and the passport book is that physically, the passport card is much smaller. It's about the size of a driver's license, while the passport book carries about 52 pages in it. More importantly, if you're trying to quickly get your international travel documents, well, only the passport book can use the one- to two-day delivery services that the government offers on these products. The passport book is also the only document of the two that's going to get you to be able to fly to international destinations. So if you're getting on a plane, you have to have this one. The passport card will not work. Moreover, as touched on earlier, the passport card is only going to get you into 20 countries. Between North America, the Caribbean, and Bermuda, while the passport book is going to get you into a plurality of countries visa-free. So now that you know the difference between the U.S. passport book and the U.S. passport card, here are six reasons you might actually want to get the U.S. passport card. So number one is that you don't actually plan on flying anywhere internationally. If you are going to be getting on a plane and going to another country, yes, you need your passport book. But if you're just driving to Canada or driving to Mexico or taking a cruise down to Bermuda, you're only going to need a U.S. passport card in that case. Number two is that you only plan on traveling between North America, the Caribbean, and Bermuda. You can't go any farther than that with the U.S. passport card. But if you don't plan on it, then why spend the extra money on the U.S. passport book? Number three is that the U.S. passport card can be used as an extra form of ID. So let's say you are going traveling, you're flying to another country, you have your passport book. You might want to get that U.S. passport card and spend that extra $30 just to have that extra form of ID. Let's say you lose your passport on the road. It's going to be a lot easier to get another one if you already have your U.S. passport card on you. Number five is that it's super compact and it really easily fits in your wallet. Now, if you're going to be traveling with a U.S. passport book, you can see how this does not fit in a wallet. It's hardly going to fit in your pocket. It's not very discreet. It's very obvious when you're walking around with it, and it's not something you'd want to lose or drop or anything like that. So having something that's a little bit more secure in that U.S. passport card might be a good idea. And the last reason you might want to get just the U.S. passport card instead of the U.S. passport book is that it's considerably less expensive. It's only $30 as compared to that $110 as we mentioned. So if you want to know the easiest way to get a U.S. passport, that video is going to be right here.