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Starting from December, Asian e-residents will be able to receive their digital identification from a visa center located in the city center of Seoul in South Korea, the aim of the pilot project is to make receiving an e-resident's digital ID as comfortable as possible, the Police and Border Guard Board said.

The police has not previously permitted any foreign partner to hand out Estonian identity documents. E-residency ID cards have only been issued in service offices of the Police and Border Guard Board or in Estonian foreign services.

"E-residency offers foreign citizens a secure access to Estonian e-services. We work towards making the application process as easy as possible, but we also want to make the issuing of the e-residents digital ID cards more convenient," Elmar Vaher, director general of the Police and Border Guard Board, said.

"This will be a pilot project, but if e-residents start using our update, then it may be possible that other visa application centers in the world can also hand out our digital ID cards. We are weighing an option that visa application centers can issue documents to the Estonian citizens in the future so that Estonians living around the world can comfortably receive their documents," Vaher said.

Interior Minister Andres Anvelt said that the pilot project is an important step for e-residency to become a global service. "We must develop the service and make the Estonian legal system and economy attractive. South Korean partners were very interested of the cooperation. That gives us a chance to introduce the Estonian e-state through e-residency," Anvelt said.

He added that next year's development of Automatic Biometric Identification System (ABIS) will be a very important step in helping e-residency become a global service. "Our identification systems are already secure, but work in that area will never end. We need to be proactive, not reactive, because it might be too late," the minister said.

The Estonian Police and Border Guard Board has issued 24 028 e-residents' digital ID cards since December 2014. Most applications have come from the citizens of Finland, the Russian Federation and Ukraine. There are also e-residents from China, Japan, South Korea and other Asian countries.

The Interior Ministry, Police and Border Guard Board and VFS South Korea Visa Application Center on October 20 signed an agreement, which permits the South Korean Visa Application Center in Seoul to hand out Estonian e-residency digital ID cards.