Visas and permits: navigating foreign bureaucracy

e-Visa, visa on arrival, and consular visa: three very different timelines

The e-Visa is requested online, is usually approved in a few business days, and must be printed along with the payment receipt. The visa on arrival (VoA) is paid at the airport, often only in cash and local currency, and is fast but exposed to lines and unfavorable exchange rates. The consular visa on paper requires instead sending your passport to the embassy and can take several weeks: it is the procedure with the lowest margin of error on timelines, so it should be started first when a trip involves multiple procedures simultaneously.

Transit visa: when it is required even for just a stopover

Some countries require a transit visa even if you never leave the international area of the airport during the stopover; the rule depends on the combination of the traveler's nationality and the transit country, not on the duration of the stop. This requirement must be verified specifically for the stopover airport — on the embassy website of that country or through the airline — and should not be confused with that of the final destination, which follows its own rules.

Official websites, intermediaries, and the ETIAS case

The simplest rule to avoid paying unnecessary fees is to always start from the official government portal of the destination country's foreign ministry or embassy, verifiable through the national or government domain. A current example is the European ETIAS: despite being expected by the end of 2026, as of October 2026 it is not yet active according to the official website etias.europa.eu, yet several third-party websites continue to sell a «registration» that today is not required by any law in force.

Before entrusting a visa application to a third-party website, look for the official government portal of your destination: in the vast majority of cases you can make the same request yourself, paying only the actual fee with no markup.