Inside VFS Global: Optional Fees, Visa Bottlenecks and the Cost of Outsourcing

A €35 Choice at the Visa Counter

Vrinda, 71, reached a VFS Global visa center in Pune, India, 15 minutes late after waiting for a taxi in torrential rain and spending an hour in traffic. She uses a walking stick and had back problems. Her reason for applying for a Belgian visa was personal: she wanted to visit her son and meet her new granddaughter.

The officer gave her two choices after she explained the delay and her health difficulties. She could return home and book another appointment, or pay the equivalent of €35 for a premium service. For Vrinda, that sum covers roughly a month of groceries.

Vrinda recalled the exchange:

They said no, you can come back another day or pay. I was quite shocked," she later recalled. "But whatever they told me, I had to follow.

At least 19 applicants told investigators that they had been pushed, misled or left with no practical choice but to pay extra fees. Ten current and former employees confirmed that such practices were widespread, describing sales targets for optional services and charges sometimes added without consent.

European governments contracting VFS have also documented repeated failures in the basic work the company is paid to perform. Inspection reports describe problems with personal data, appointment access and service quality. Despite those findings, VFS has faced limited consequences and continues to process visa applications for nearly every European Union member state.

The story brings together two pressures on applicants: difficulty securing access to a visa appointment and demands to spend more once they reach the counter. Governments retain the decision on whether to grant a visa, while a private company controls much of the administration that comes before it.

How VFS Became a Global Gatekeeper

Zubin Karkaria founded VFS Global in 2001 while working as an executive at the travel company Kuoni. A Zoroastrian priest and entrepreneur, he saw embassies struggling with rising visa demand and persuaded the United States embassy in Mumbai to let him run a pilot outsourcing scheme.

The model expanded into the largest business in its sector. VFS holds contracts with more than 70 governments across 167 countries and operates over 3,500 application centers. Its competitors include BLS International and TLS Contact. Headquartered in Dubai, VFS is majority owned by the private equity firm Blackstone.

VFS handles appointments, receives applications, collects biometric data and forwards paperwork to consulates. Biometric data includes fingerprints used to identify applicants. The government concerned, rather than VFS, decides whether someone receives a visa.

The EU Visa Code allows VFS to charge a mandatory service fee for its core administrative work. Applicants bear the full cost, so contracting governments pay nothing directly under this arrangement. Rising travel demand and more complex security requirements after 2001 made outsourcing attractive to immigration departments seeking to contain spending.

Many Europeans, accustomed to traveling without visas across much of the world, have little reason to encounter VFS. Across much of Asia, Africa and the Middle East, students, workers, tourists and relatives trying to reach Europe know it as a frequently unavoidable first stop. Their access to a consulate begins with its booking system and its fees.

Critics worry that this turns migrants into a source of commercial revenue while placing large amounts of sensitive personal information in corporate hands. The concern extends beyond the mandatory service charge to the extra products sold alongside the application process.

What Optional Services Earn

SMS notifications, courier delivery, document scanning, premium lounges and appointments at home generate substantial revenue for VFS. These services sit alongside the administrative work covered by the mandatory fee.

Financial statements filed in Luxembourg show that value added services accounted for an average of 30 percent of revenue across a sample of Swedish visa receipts from 16 countries. SMS alerts alone represented about 5 percent. In Kenya, where former employees allege that charges were frequently added without permission, more than 90 percent of applicants paid for SMS services, generating roughly 10 percent of local revenue.

Operating profits quadrupled between 2017 and 2024, while application volume grew by 15 percent. High margin extras, including SMS alerts and courier charges, were a major driver of that profit growth. The two figures show how much faster earnings rose than the number of applications handled.

Rohit Taneja, a visa operations officer at the Delhi center between 2016 and 2017, described persistent pressure to sell additional services. He said applicants, particularly those visiting for the first time, often believed staff represented the embassy and accepted their advice as authoritative.

We had targets on SMS and courier numbers. We had to pitch, try to convince, even if the applicant said no. People think that we are from the embassy and whatever we are saying is right, especially visitors coming for the first time. So, we got very few denials.

Taneja also said employees received sales training and were taught to identify emotional weak points that could compel applicants to buy. For someone worried about missing a family visit, a university place or a travel deadline, a recommendation at the visa counter can carry considerable weight.

Sales Targets and Charges Without Consent

A current visa officer in Nigeria, speaking anonymously for fear of retaliation, said bonuses for selling extras to United Kingdom visa applicants could approach twice the base salary of contractors. Those contractors earn just over €125 a month.

A former senior officer who left in 2020 described the arrangement as highly exploitative and said low wages encouraged aggressive behavior. The current officer explained the sales expectations:

"There is always a need to sell optional extras. You have to be persistent in making sure the applicant sees reasons to buy them," the current officer stated.

Several former employees across East Africa and South Asia said staff commonly included SMS or courier services on bills without customer approval. A former Kenyan employee said most customers would simply accept the charges.

European monitoring documents describe similar problems. A 2024 inspection by Czech authorities found that VFS applied excessive pressure to promote additional services, leading some applicants to believe that purchasing them would guarantee visa approval. Swedish authorities recorded over multiple years that VFS was not always explicit about these services being optional.

The visa decision remains with the government. Selling a premium lounge, an SMS alert or a courier service alongside an application creates a separate commercial transaction, yet the Czech findings show that some applicants understood the purchase as a way to secure approval.

Personal Data and Appointment Access

Inspectors from the European Commission and 22 Schengen countries identified 21 instances in which VFS mishandled personal data under the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR. The rules govern how personal information is handled, including how it is protected and when it must be deleted.

Luxembourg reported in 2022 that applicant biometric data was transported across a city on an unencrypted compact disk. Encryption makes information unreadable without the means to unlock it. Norway found failures to delete data within legal deadlines in some centers every year from 2021 through 2024.

Swedish inspectors also identified shortcomings in staff understanding of the rules. Their description was:

a lack of knowledge among staff when it comes to GDPR.

Visa applications involve passports, fingerprints, financial records and travel histories. Failures to protect that information expose millions of applicants to potential identity fraud, making data handling a central part of the service rather than an administrative detail.

Appointment access presents another problem. EU regulations explicitly prohibit outsourcing firms from selling additional appointment slots. A European Commission inspection in 2022 nevertheless found that VFS systematically made extra slots available for a fee in Senegal under its contract with the Italian consulate.

Latvia reported that applicants in Istanbul could purchase premium appointments while regular slots showed no availability. Five EU countries also recorded bots or outside agents hoarding free appointments and reselling them, leaving genuine applicants unable to book directly. Bots are automated programs that can repeatedly search for and capture available slots.

Michael Tiffany, founding partner of the security firm Human, said simple defenses such as CAPTCHA challenges do little against determined appointment scalpers. He described the level of protection needed:

Anti-bot measures must match the stakes. A profitable botnet demands dedication and expertise to defeat.

When Upload Problems Lead to Paid Help

A lawyer based in the United Kingdom described a recurring problem on the VFS portal that falsely flagged merged documents as containing viruses. The error forced him to ask clients to pay for VFS scanning rather than upload the files himself.

A software engineer in Cape Town reported identical errors while applying for a British visa. He explained why he disputed the warning:

"I know they do not contain viruses. I work with software every single day, this is my job," he stated.

For these applicants, a problem with the standard digital process led toward a paid alternative. The difficulty occurred before a consulate considered the application, at the stage when people were trying to submit their documents.

VFS also operates a parallel chain of concierge businesses called OneVasco, often located beside official application centers. In India, OneVasco profit margins reached 53 percent in 2024 and 70 percent in 2023.

Several governments are concerned that travelers confuse these commercial assistance businesses with official consular channels. A French diplomat said authorities demanded an action plan to separate OneVasco clearly from contracted services. The concern is about applicants being able to tell which services form part of the official submission process and which are additional commercial help.

Sri Lanka, Nigeria and South Asian Students

Sri Lanka's government awarded VFS a monopoly lasting 12 years in 2024 over electronic visas and visas issued on arrival. A simple state interface was replaced by a cumbersome portal requiring social media handles and additional documentation.

Fees for tourists from regional neighbors rose from $20 to $75. Travelers from India, China, Russia and several Southeast Asian countries lost privileges allowing travel without a visa and faced a processing charge of $25.77. A state telecommunications agency had reportedly offered identical processing assistance for $1 per visa.

Opposition politicians alleged corruption. A popular online content creator also highlighted a potential data breach after his private email address began receiving personal details belonging to other tourist applicants.

In Nigeria, investigative journalist Theophilus Abbah discovered that the amount he had paid exceeded the official South African visa fee by more than threefold. More recently, applicants in Abuja and Lagos have described camping outside centers before dawn, encountering unexplained surcharges and facing verbal abuse.

Students in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and India report that agents hoard free visa appointments and resell them at extortionate prices. Syed Nooh, an international education specialist, warned that universities had been forced to extend deadlines for late arrivals because students could not secure appointments in time.

Nooh suggested allowing multiple outsourcing providers to break the bottlenecks. He pointed to a similar reform in tuberculosis testing for visa applicants that had resolved previous congestion. His proposal addresses access to the application process, where delays can disrupt a student's plans before any visa decision is made.

Indian police arrested two VFS employees and one former worker in Ahmedabad in 2023 after Canadian authorities detected forged biometric data. The suspects allegedly enrolled fingerprints for 28 applicants without those applicants being present and issued fake appointment letters. They charged between ₹5,000 and ₹7,000 per person.

The Ahmedabad allegations concern the integrity of identity checks, while the appointment complaints concern access and cost. Together, they illustrate openings for fraud when oversight is weak and commercial pressures dominate the administration of visas.

Governments See Problems but Rely on Outsourcing

Nine EU governments that responded to questions said they issued sanctions where appropriate and took allegations of aggressive selling seriously. Seven said they were generally pleased with outsourcing, and two specifically expressed satisfaction with VFS.

Internal government documents describe a more troubled operation. An EU working group in India recorded persistent data entry failures, scanning problems, weak information technology infrastructure and dismal communication between VFS management and local offices in 2023.

The Czech Republic told other members that it had raised problems repeatedly but saw only temporary improvement before conduct deteriorated again. Switzerland said it had no other option than to work intensively with VFS because its consulate could never handle the volume by itself.

Some countries have fined VFS or switched providers when contracts expired. According to the company website, Spain is the only EU member state that currently does not use VFS for visa processing. Changing companies also has limits: internal monitoring reports accuse TLS Contact and BLS International of aggressive selling and GDPR breaches.

The European Commission has launched a comprehensive study of visa outsourcing to develop options for preventing abuses. No completion date or timetable for resulting decisions was given. As of May 28, 2026, governments remain dependent on outsourced capacity while considering how to address the documented problems.

Belgium took a different approach in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Belgian diplomat Joris Salden kept visa processing inside the embassy instead of contracting it out. He explained his reasoning:

What we see in other countries is that having a third-party partner does not automatically solve all problems. If you outsource, you no longer have direct control over the problem. And a third-party partner does not work for free.

Salden's decision highlights the choice governments face between maintaining direct control and buying the capacity to handle large application volumes. VFS remains accountable to its shareholders as a company, while governments remain responsible for border decisions and the conditions under which applicants reach them.

The Dates Behind the Expansion and Complaints

VFS grew from a pilot project in Mumbai into a global administrative network over more than two decades. The documented complaints span several years and concern sales practices, data protection, appointment access and identity checks.

The principal dates show how those issues developed alongside the company's expansion:

• 2001: Zubin Karkaria founded VFS and secured a pilot outsourcing arrangement with the United States embassy in Mumbai.
• 2016 to 2017: Rohit Taneja worked at the Delhi center, where he described targets for selling SMS and courier services.
• 2017 to 2024: Operating profits quadrupled while application volume increased by 15 percent.
• 2020: A former senior officer in Nigeria left the company and later described low wages and pressure to sell extras.
• 2021 to 2024: Norway recorded failures in some centers to delete personal data within legal deadlines each year.
• 2022: Luxembourg reported biometric data transported on an unencrypted disk, and European Commission inspectors found paid additional appointment slots in Senegal.
• 2023: An EU working group in India documented operational failures, Indian police made arrests in Ahmedabad over alleged biometric fraud, and OneVasco recorded a 70 percent profit margin in India.
• 2024: Czech inspectors documented excessive pressure to buy extras, Sri Lanka awarded the monopoly lasting 12 years, and OneVasco's Indian profit margin stood at 53 percent.

By May 28, 2026, the European Commission's outsourcing study represents an attempt to develop remedies for a system that governments continue to use. Applicants still bear the administrative charges, while complaints show how optional purchases, scarce appointments and unreliable systems can add to the cost of reaching a consulate.

Key Points

• VFS operates more than 3,500 application centers across 167 countries for more than 70 governments and is majority owned by Blackstone.
• Governments decide visa applications; VFS manages appointments, paperwork, biometric collection and other administrative work.
• At least 19 applicants described pressure or misleading practices involving extra fees, and ten current or former employees confirmed widespread problems.
• Optional services averaged 30 percent of revenue in a sample of Swedish visa receipts from 16 countries.
• Operating profits quadrupled between 2017 and 2024, compared with 15 percent growth in applications.
• European inspectors identified 21 instances of mishandled personal data, alongside appointment irregularities and pressure to buy additional services.
• Complaints in Sri Lanka, Nigeria and South Asia involve higher costs, difficult appointment access, alleged fraud and possible data exposure.
• The European Commission has launched an outsourcing study, while governments continue to rely on private providers and Belgium has retained embassy processing in the Democratic Republic of Congo.