Terms of service

Effective date: September 14, 2026
Last updated: September 14, 2026

These terms are the agreement between you and Biometric Photos LLC ("PassportPhotos AI", "we", "us") for the use of passportphotos.ai and the photo service at photos.passportphotos.ai. By using the site or buying anything from it you agree to them. If you do not agree, do not use the service.

These terms are written to be read. Where a section carries legal weight beyond its plain meaning, it says so.

1. Who we are, and who we are not

PassportPhotos AI is a private company. We are not part of, affiliated with, endorsed by or acting for the United States government, the US Department of State, US Citizenship and Immigration Services, or any other government or foreign authority. Nothing we sell is an official government document or service. Government fees for passports, visas and other documents are separate from anything you pay us and are paid to the authority directly.

Whether a photo is accepted is always the authority's decision. Photos taken with PassportPhotos AI comply with standards recognized by the US Department of State, and for other documents we work from the issuing authority's published specification. Our software checks photos against those rules before you pay, and we stand behind that check with the guarantee in Section 7. We cannot accept a photo on any authority's behalf and we make no promise that any authority will accept any photo. Rules can change, and an officer can reject a photo for a reason the published rules do not cover.

2. What the service does

You take or upload a photo. Our software, and where needed the third party services named in our privacy policy, crop it to the size of the document you chose, replace the background, resize it and check it against the published rules for that document. You see a preview and every check result before any price is shown, and you decide whether to buy. A photo that fails a check cannot be bought; you retake it at no charge (Section 5). After payment, we deliver the finished photo by email and on your order page, and if you chose them, as prints mailed to you or picked up at a location you choose.

We do not alter faces. We crop, size, replace the background and check. If you buy the photo retouching option, we remove temporary skin blemishes, shadows under the eyes, single stray hairs and dust spots, and nothing else. We never change a feature, an eye color, a skin tone or an expression.

3. Your photo and your promises about it

You own your photo. You keep every right in the photo you upload and in the finished photo we deliver. You give us a limited license to store, process, copy and transmit the photo, and to send it to the subprocessors named in our privacy policy, only as needed to make, check and deliver your order and to handle any guarantee claim. That license ends when your files are deleted, no later than 30 days after delivery.

You promise that:

  • The photo is of you, or of a person who has given you permission to upload it and to have their face processed as described in our privacy policy, or of your own child for whom you are a parent or legal guardian.
  • You will not upload photos of other people's children.
  • You will not use the service to impersonate anyone, to make a photo for a document in someone else's name, or for any fraudulent application.
  • You will not upload content that is unlawful, that you do not have the right to use, or that shows anyone who has not consented.
  • The photo meets the recency rule for your document (for a US passport, taken within the last 6 months), and you will confirm that before you pay.

If you break one of these promises, we can cancel the order, refuse a refund and delete the files. We can also report fraud to the authorities.

Biometric consent. Making your photo involves measuring the position and state of the facial features in it. Before the camera opens or an upload begins you will be asked to agree to that, with the notice required by state biometric laws. Our privacy policy explains it in full. You cannot use the service without agreeing.

4. Ordering, payment and delivery

Prices are in US dollars and are shown on the checkout screen after the initial check has passed. The total shown includes tax. Prices can change; the price you pay is the one shown when you pay.

Payment is taken by Shopify on our behalf, by card or an express wallet. One order is one payment. No account is created.

Digital delivery. Once payment is confirmed, the finished file is emailed to the address you gave at checkout, normally within a minute, and posted on your order page, where it can be downloaded for 30 days. It is your responsibility to give a correct email address and to save the file before it is deleted. If the email does not arrive, check your spam folder, then contact us and we will resend it.

Mailed prints. Prints are made at our fulfillment center and shipped by USPS to the address you gave at checkout, normally within one business day of payment. Shipping is free and most orders arrive in 2 to 3 business days. Delivery times are USPS's, not ours. If prints arrive damaged or have not arrived within 10 days of shipping, tell us and we will send a new set at no charge. We ship within the United States only. Our shipping policy is part of these terms.

Pickup at a location. If you choose pickup, we place a print order at the store you chose on the map. The store charges its own print fee, about 50 cents, when you collect; that fee is the store's, not ours, and is not included in our price. We email you when the order is ready, with the store address and the pickup details. Ready times are estimates. If the store you chose cannot fill the order, we may move it to the nearest store that can and will tell you. The store is not our agent and we are not responsible for its hours or its staff, though we will fix any problem we can. Listed stores are not affiliated with our service.

Preview and continuing past a warning. You see the initial check results before you pay. If a check fails and you choose to continue anyway, you are choosing to buy a photo we told you may be rejected, and the guarantee does not cover it.

5. The checks and retakes

Every photo is checked by our software against the published rules for your document before a price is shown. If a check fails, the screen tells you what to fix and you retake the photo at no charge, as many times as needed. A photo that fails a blocking check cannot be bought. The checks are our reading of the published rules; the authority makes the final decision (Section 1).

6. Photo deletion and your data

Your uploaded photo, the finished files and any facial measurements are deleted 30 days after delivery, or immediately when you press the delete now link on your order page. We never use your photos to train, improve or evaluate any artificial intelligence or machine learning model. Our privacy policy is part of these terms.

7. The guarantee

This section carries legal weight.

Who is covered. The acceptance guarantee applies to orders that include the "Acceptance guarantee" option, bought at checkout. Orders without it go through the same checks under Section 5, but are not covered by this section.

The promise. If the issuing authority rejects a photo that we delivered under a covered order, for a reason concerning the photo itself, we will refund 200% of the total price you paid for that order, including any delivery cost, to the payment method you used.

How to claim. Email hello@passportphotos.ai within 14 days of the rejection, with your order number and the authority's rejection document (the letter, email or screen message stating that the photo was rejected and why). We may ask for the photo as submitted. We issue the refund within 3 business days of accepting a valid claim.

One claim per photo.

The guarantee does not apply if:

  • the rejection was for a reason unrelated to the photo, for example a form, fee, identity or document problem;
  • the source file did not meet the technical requirements shown on the initial check screen and you chose to continue anyway;
  • the photo was changed by you or anyone else after we delivered it, including cropping, filtering, editing, or printing on paper that is not photo paper;
  • the photo was older than the authority's recency rule when you submitted it (for a US passport, 6 months);
  • the order did not include the Acceptance guarantee option; or
  • the claim is fraudulent or the rejection document is not genuine.

The guarantee is our only promise about acceptance, and double the price paid is the most we will refund under it. Other refunds are described in our refund policy, which is part of these terms.

8. Photo retouching option

If you buy photo retouching, it is applied automatically at payment, before the files are released. It is limited to temporary skin blemishes, shadows under the eyes, single stray hairs and dust or spots from the lens or scanner. We do not change features, skin tone, eye color, expression or the outline of the head, because authorities reject altered photos. If retouching cannot be applied to your photo, we deliver the untouched photo and refund the retouching fee on request.

9. Acceptable use

Do not: use the service for any unlawful purpose; upload anyone's photo without their permission; upload sexual content, or any content involving a minor other than your own child's document photo; attempt to access other customers' files; scrape, copy or resell the service; interfere with the service or try to get around its limits; or use the finished photos to deceive anyone about who a person is. We can suspend or refuse service to anyone who does.

10. Our content

The site, the software, the guidance, the text and the design are ours or our licensors' and are protected by copyright and other laws. You may use them to use the service and for nothing else. Photos you upload and receive are yours, as Section 3 says.

11. Disclaimers

Apart from the guarantee in Section 7 and anything the law does not let us disclaim, the service is provided "as is" and "as available". We do not promise that it will be uninterrupted or error free, or that any authority will accept any photo. Photo rules are set and interpreted by the authorities, and the checks we run are our reading of the published rules, not the authority's.

12. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, our total liability to you for anything arising from the service or these terms is limited to the amount you paid us for the order in question, except that a valid guarantee claim under Section 7 is paid at the amount stated there. We are not liable for indirect, incidental, special or consequential losses, including a missed trip, a missed appointment, a delayed application, lost income or lost profits, even if we were told they could happen. Some states do not allow some of these limits, so some of them may not apply to you.

13. Indemnity

If someone brings a claim against us because you broke a promise in Section 3, for example because you uploaded a photo of a person without permission, you agree to cover our costs and losses from that claim.

14. Disputes

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of New York. Anything not resolved informally will be heard in the state or federal courts located in New York County, New York.

Before starting any formal dispute, email hello@passportphotos.ai with "Dispute" in the subject. Most problems are a retake or a refund away, and we will try to settle it within 30 days.

15. Changes to these terms

We can change these terms. When we do, we update the date at the top. Your continued use after that date means you accept the change. The terms in force when you placed an order apply to that order.

16. General

If any part of these terms is found unenforceable, the rest still applies. These terms, the privacy policy, the refund policy and the shipping policy are the entire agreement between us about the service. You may not transfer your rights under them; we may transfer ours to a successor of the business. Our not enforcing a term is not a waiver of it.

17. Contact

Biometric Photos LLC
11 East 86th Street, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10028
hello@passportphotos.ai
516-231-9449