The Visa Empire: Borders as a Business

NEWSROOM: BORDERS
Co-published with
Kash Tembo
May 28, 2026

Outsourcing giant VFS Global has made huge profits by exploiting people around the world whose ‘weak’ passports require them to apply for visas to travel

Most European citizens will never have heard of VFS Global. Accustomed to visa-free travel, they have probably never had to queue at one of its application centres, pay its service charges or navigate its complex appointment booking systems.

But across much of Africa, Asia and the Middle East, the visa outsourcing giant has become notorious. For people in these regions seeking to travel for work, study or to unite with family, VFS is often their first encounter with the border. And for many, this entails not only the stress and uncertainty of restrictive visa regimes, but also being compelled to hand over cash for what should be optional services — sales that have become central to the VFS Global’s growth.

Since its founding in 2001, VFS has grown into a multi-billion-dollar company whose owners include a major donor to Donald Trump and Dubai’s ruling family. It now holds visa outsourcing contracts with 71 governments worldwide. While applicants are charged a mandatory service fee, VFS has built an adjacent business around selling add-ons such as SMS updates, courier return services and access to premium lounges.

A year-long investigation by Lighthouse Reports, in collaboration with 14 media outlets, has found that VFS has created a system of aggressive – and at times dishonest – upselling. Staff are typically paid low base salaries and awarded bonuses contingent on meeting monthly sales targets for value added services, creating perverse incentives to sell.

Sales of these services have been key to the company’s growing profitability, which has increased fourfold in recent years, and have helped drive huge profits for its investors, our analysis shows.

We also found evidence that customers are exposed to bribery at the hands of both external agents and sometimes VFS staff, as well as repeated mishandling of personal data, amounting to what experts described as “manifestly serious violations of the GDPR”. Internal documents show that contracting governments know about these violations, but rarely take robust action.

Drawing on hundreds of internal EU documents obtained through Freedom of Information requests, as well as financial statements, analysis of customer receipts and interviews with dozens of former VFS employees, this investigation reveals how governments have offloaded a core state function to a company that treats would-be would-be workers, students and tourists as a captive market to be exploited.

VFS said that “any suggestion that VFS Global’s financial growth has been generated through improper conduct is false”.

METHODS

EU member states are required under EU law to closely and regularly monitor outsourced visa service providers such as VFS. Through Freedom of Information requests we obtained inspection and monitoring reports of visa service providers by 22 countries from the EU’s Schengen free-travel zone that have contracts with VFS, as well as dozens of EU documents evaluating member states’ application of the Schengen laws, including the outsourcing of visa processing to companies including VFS. We obtained leaked reports from the European Commission’s own diplomatic service which revealed EU governments are aware of consistent deficiencies in VFS’s service. Diplomatic sources confirmed they were aware of these problems.

We interviewed dozens of current and former VFS staff across several countries in Asia, Africa and the Middle East to gain insight into the company’s sales practices that push applicants to buy value added services. They told us workers are typically paid low base salaries, with bonuses tied to meeting monthly targets for sales of additional services, creating huge pressure to meet these targets.

By analysing financial statements of VFS and its subsidiaries around the world we were able to understand the role of value added service to the business. Its consolidated financial statements in Luxembourg showed that its revenues increased out of proportion to the number of visa applications it processed, that its profits had increased fourfold between 2017 and 2024, and that the company consistently attributed its profitability, and its future growth, to sales of value added services. Accounts from a subsidiary in India showed that its value added services business in the country made pre-tax margins of up to 70%.

We visited numerous VFS visa centres and used social media forums to speak to visa applicants who told us about their experiences dealing with VFS. Dozens of them told us they were pushed, misled or left with little practical choice but to pay extra fees to the company.

By submitting FOI requests to Swedish embassies, we obtained more than 2,000 receipts for applications made from 16 countries in Asia and Africa over a two-week period in 2025. We used machine reading to establish that value added services account for 30% of VFS’s revenue in the sample.

We obtained evidence of bribery in the form of undercover footage revealing a VFS staff member in the DRC claiming to guarantee visas in exchange for a payment higher than the normal fee.

STORYLINES

Vrinda was exhausted by the time she reached VFS’s office in Pune, India, last June after waiting for a taxi in torrential rain and traveling an hour in traffic. The 71-year-old was applying for a visa to visit her son in Belgium and meet her new granddaughter. Thankfully she was only 15 minutes late for her appointment.

“I explained the situation with the rain, and told [the visa officer] I had problems with my back,” recalls Vrinda, who uses a walking stick.

But the VFS officer told her she had two choices: Go home and book another appointment, or pay the equivalent of €35 for the company’s premium service — roughly the cost of what Vrinda pays for a month’s worth of groceries.

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

Vrinda’s experience is far from unique: she is one of myriad visa applicants who told us they were hit with unexpected fees during their visit to VFS Global.

And it’s not only applicants who have told us VFS pushes people to buy expensive ‘premium’ services. Current and former VFS employees told us they were typically paid low base salaries, with bonuses tied to meeting monthly targets for sales of what should be optional add-ons such as access to premium lounges and SMS updates – and described feeling pressured to meet these targets.

Former staff in several countries told us that they put such added value services onto customers’ bills without their consent. “Most customers would just accept this,” said one ex-employee who worked for VFS in Kenya until 2024.

A visa officer currently working at VFS in Nigeria said the bonuses for selling value added services could amount to almost twice the base salaries of contractors. He said contractors make up the majority of the VFS workforce and earn about €126 a month. The result, he explained, is constant pressure to sell.

“There is always a need to sell value-added services,” he said. “You have to be persistent in making sure the applicant sees reasons to buy them.”

Rohit Taneja, who worked as a visa operations officer at VFS’s Delhi center between 2016 and 2017, said: “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 those visiting for the first time. So, we got very few denials.”

Some applicants have taken matters into their own hands. One online petition states that VFS has built a ‘digital wall’ and has become a “monopoly service provider” for the Schengen area that “lacks basic accountability” and has “no incentive to fix broken systems”.

Joyce José, the Angolan-British national who launched the petition, is determined in her demand for change, telling us: “We’ll keep pushing because those of us who have to deal with VFS are demanding a permanent systemic fix rather than one-off resolutions.”

Full statement of VFS

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