OREANDA-NEWS. January 16, 2015. According to the latest data, Estonian government has received applications from 449 people to obtain an Estonian e-residency, and has approved 169 of them.

Estonia has set an ambitious plan to have at least 10 million e-residents by 2025.

Under the plan, interested applicants can obtain a digital ID that will let them use Estonia’s digital services online around the world. Although similar to the ID-card used by Estonian citizens, it does not equal with the citizenship. The e-residency card does not carry a person’s photo and is therefore not an identity card per se. But it is equipped with a chip, a personal code, and holds biometrics data, such as eye and fingerprint.

The applications are processed by the Estonian Police and Border Guard and appropriate security and background checks are conducted before approval.

However, according to weekly newspaper Eesti Ekspress, Estonia would not have an ability to handle as many applications as set by the ambitious plan. It calculated that in order to achieve the target of 10 million e-residents by 2025, the state would have to handle and approve 2714 applications per day, or 113 per hour, 24 hours in a row, including the weekends and national holidays.

The Estonian Police and Border Guard said that they have received applications from more than 50 countries so far. Most applications have been received from Finland (174), the second is Russia with 83 applications, followed by Latvia (24), the United Kingdom (20), and the United States (19). Citizens from New Zealand, Venezuela, Japan, Sri Lanka and Mexico have also applied.