Cambodia e-Arrival vs US Passport Details: Avoiding Name and Number Mismatches

The passport number: copy it character by character

The passport number is a short string of letters and digits, and short strings are deceptively easy to mistype. US passport numbers are typically nine characters — usually all digits on newer books, though some carry a leading letter. The mistake is never the whole number; it is one character in the middle that your eye glides past. That one character is enough to break the match.

Copy the number directly off the bio page of your passport, looking at it as you type, not from memory and not from an old screenshot. The two errors that account for most US mismatches are transposing two adjacent digits — typing 7 4 instead of 4 7 — and confusing the number zero with the capital letter O, or the digit 1 with a lowercase L. Read the number out loud as you enter it if that helps, then read it back against the page one more time before you move on.

One more place the number has to agree: your eVisa. The passport number you used when you applied for your Cambodia eVisa is locked into that approval. Your e-Arrival Card has to carry the same number, because Immigration ties all three records together through it. If you renewed your passport after you got your eVisa, that is a real problem — your eVisa is tied to the old book, and you should sort that out before you travel rather than papering over it on the arrival card.

How the machine-readable zone reads your name and number

It helps to understand what the officer’s scanner is actually reading, because it explains why exactness matters so much. At the bottom of your US passport bio page are two long lines of letters, numbers, and angle-bracket characters. That is the machine-readable zone — the part the kiosk scans to pull your identity in a fraction of a second. It encodes your surname, your given names, your passport number, your nationality, your date of birth, and your sex in a fixed, rigid format.

The scanner does not interpret or guess. It reads the characters in that zone literally and compares them against what you filed on the e-Arrival Card and what is on your eVisa. There is no "close enough." A name that reads "Jon Smith" on your card against "Jonathan Michael Smith" in the zone is two different strings to the system, even though you know it is the same person. That literal comparison is the whole reason the guidance is "copy the passport exactly" rather than "enter your name."

The practical takeaway is simple: the bio page is your single reference for every identity field, and the machine-readable zone is the version of your details the machine trusts. Type from the printed lines above it — the human-readable name and number — and you will match the zone, because the passport office generated both from the same record. If you have already submitted and realize a character is off, do not improvise at the gate; our guide on how to fix a mistake on your e-Arrival Card after submitting walks through the correction path.

There is one comfort here for nervous travelers: you are not being asked to decode the angle-bracket lines yourself. The machine-readable zone is for the scanner. Your job is only to copy the plain, human-readable name and passport number printed right above it onto the card, exactly as you see them. Get those right and the encoded zone takes care of itself.

Name-change, hyphens, suffixes, and dual-national edge cases

Most Americans copy a clean first-middle-last name straight off the passport and are done. A few situations need a closer look, almost all of them about what the passport currently shows versus what you think of as your name today.

Recent name change after marriage or divorce is the most common one. The rule never changes: match the passport you will physically hand over. If you married in 2025, took your spouse’s surname, but your passport still shows your maiden name, then your eVisa and your e-Arrival Card both use the maiden name. If you already renewed the passport into your married name, everything uses the married name. The danger is mixing the two — a maiden-name passport with a married-name arrival card reads as a mismatch every time.

Hyphenated and two-part surnames trip people up next. If your passport prints "Garcia-Lopez" with a hyphen, keep the hyphen. If it prints "Van Der Berg" with spaces, keep the spaces. Do not collapse, reorder, or "tidy" a surname that the passport shows a particular way. Suffixes follow the same logic: if "Jr." or "III" appears on the bio page, include it where the form allows; if it does not appear on the passport, leave it off the card even if you use it day to day.

Dual nationals have an extra decision. If you hold a US passport and a second passport, apply for the eVisa and file the e-Arrival Card on the one passport you will actually enter Cambodia with — and exit on the same one. Pick the US passport, and every field comes off the US bio page. Switching documents mid-trip is what causes problems at the gate. The same name-matching discipline that protects your eVisa applies here; our guide on fixing a Cambodia eVisa name mismatch covers the visa side in detail if your approval and passport have already drifted apart.

A quick word on the occupation field, since it sits near the identity section and trips up the same careful travelers: it does not need to match anything on your passport, because your passport does not list an occupation. Enter your real status — employed, retired, student, self-employed — and move on. Only the name, number, date of birth, and nationality have to match the passport exactly.

A 30-second match check before you submit

Before you file, put your US passport bio page next to the screen and run four checks. Given name matches the passport, including the full form of any name you shorten in daily life. Middle name matches exactly — present if the passport shows one, absent if it does not. Passport number reads character for character with no transposed digits and no zero-versus-O confusion. And the name and number both agree with the eVisa you already hold. Four checks against one document, and they catch every mismatch that sends US travelers back to the kiosk queue.

1. 1
   Open the passport bio page

   Put your US passport bio page beside the screen and copy every identity field from it, never from memory.

2. 2
   Check the given name

   Enter the full given name the passport prints, not a nickname or shortened form you use day to day.

3. 3
   Check the middle name

   Match the passport exactly — enter the middle name if it shows one, leave it blank if it does not.

4. 4
   Check the passport number

   Copy it character by character, watching for transposed digits and a zero read as the letter O.

5. 5
   Confirm it agrees with your eVisa

   The name and passport number must match the Cambodia eVisa you already hold, which is tied to that passport.

6. 6
   Read it back, then submit

   Read the name and number back against the bio page once more before you submit the e-Arrival Card.

Keep the order of operations in mind for the whole trip. The eVisa is the big step you do first, weeks ahead — Tourist $80 USD or Business $90 USD, both approved in 3 business days and delivered as a printable PDF by email — and it locks in the name and passport number every later document has to match. The e-Arrival Card is the light step you do last, in the week before you fly, and it has to echo the eVisa exactly. For the full picture of the Cambodia visa for US citizens, our pillar guide covers requirements, costs, and timing in one place.

When you file a verified e-Arrival Card through us for $5 USD, we check your name spelling and passport number against your passport before it reaches Cambodian Immigration — the dropped middle name, the nickname instead of the full given name, the transposed digit, the zero read as an O. If a character is off, we catch it before it becomes a kiosk problem. If you have already filed and spotted a slip, our guide on how to fix a mistake on your e-Arrival Card after submitting walks through the correction, and our walkthrough of the occupation field clears up the other field travelers ask about most.

Next steps and related reading for US travelers: file your verified e-Arrival Card when your flight is locked in, run the full step-by-step e-Arrival walkthrough if you want every field in order, learn how to fix a mistake on the card if you already submitted, and apply for your Cambodia eVisa if you still need the visa itself.