Kolky (or Revenue Stamps in English) have been used by the MOI to cover all immigration related admin fees for decades. Until now, you could not pay the MOI in other way than using the kolky. That changes on Jan 1, 2025. Read on what changes, when and what does it mean for you below.
What is “kolky”
Let’s start with the basics for those of you who maybe never used these so far.
Kolek (singular from kolky) is a special type of postal stamp which are used to cover governmental fees instead of money. There are different explanations why but let’s leave this topic for now 😀 Kolky are the required method of payment for many dealings with many governmental institutions such as courts, different ministries, tax office or Police.
At the Ministry of the Interior (MOI), they have been the only way to pay for your residence permit applications for decades. This means that if you were submitting some application inside of the Czech Republic (be it a partnership visa, employee card, extension of your business residence permit or your permanent residence permit application), you had to cover the administrative fee (2 500 CZK in most cases) in these “kolek” stamps.
You could potentially use a bank transfer but it was difficult (and kinda risky) to get to that point.
What changes from Jan 1, 2025
As you might have heard, the kolky stamps stopped being printed earlier this year (2024). Since there were millions of them on stock, they were still being used and accepted with the plan on being replaced by cash or card payments once the post office runs out of them.
And this time is coming now.
From Jan 1, 2025 kolky should stop being used as an official method of payment of the Czech government, in our case (immigration related) primarily by the Ministry of the Interior.
What does it mean for you
What it means for you is that if you are submitting your application still within the year of 2024, you should still use kolky to cover the administrative fee.
If you are submitting your application after the New Year’s, you should not use kolky anymore.
The official MOI’s website says that card payment will be available at the MOI’s branches, alternatively you/they should be able to generate payment details in your Foreigners Reservation System.
Based on some recent experience with the digital building permit, we are not 100% positive that all MOI branches will have operational payment terminals on Jan 2, 2025 when they re-open after the Christmas holidays though.
As with basically all similar changes, there will most likely be some issues from not having enough terminals, terminals not working or the staff not really knowing how to operate the terminals.
There is not really much you can do about that other than being even more patient with the MOI than usual and hope everything will be working well soon 🙂
Let us know how it went at the MOI and of course, contact us if you need any assistance with your immigration matters, housing or health insurance.
