The crossing

How to enrol for the Huanggang face-scan lanes

Updated 24 September 2026

The new Huanggang Port is built around one idea: you queue once and three gates clear you for both Hong Kong and Shenzhen. The fastest version is face scan, where you walk up without taking anything out of your pocket. That only works if you have enrolled, and the enrolment rules are spread across a Security Bureau FAQ, an Immigration Department services page and a comment from the Director of Immigration. This page puts them in one place and says plainly what has not been published yet.

If you have not read about the port itself, start with the new Huanggang Port guide, which covers the opening date, the buses and what happens to Lok Ma Chau. This page is only about getting yourself, and your family, through the automated lanes on the first trip.

How do you enrol for the Huanggang automated lanes?

The Security Bureau's clearance arrangements page lists four ways for a Hong Kong resident to enrol for what it calls the "collaborative inspection" automated channels:

1. The Contactless e-Channel mobile app, run by the Immigration Department. This is the one you can do from your sofa.
2. At the automated channels themselves, on departure from Hong Kong. You enrol at the gate as you cross.
3. At self-service kiosks. The Director of Immigration, Benson Kwok, told RTHK on 5 September that kiosks at the redeveloped port will take registrations for facial recognition.
4. At an e-Channel enrolment office, staffed by the Immigration Department at most control points.

All of them are free. The Immigration Department's e-Channel page for residents lists every e-Channel service as free of charge, and nothing in the Huanggang material suggests otherwise. If a website or a stranger at the bus stop offers to "pre-register" you for a fee, walk away.

One thing is still unannounced. Mr Kwok said prior registration for facial recognition would be available "soon" through a new app, whose launch would be announced in due course. By 24 September no such app had been announced. Until it is, the Contactless e-Channel app is the route the Security Bureau names, and the one to use.

Who can use face scan, and who needs document reading?

The lanes run in two modes, and your age decides which one you get. The Bureau's FAQ sets it out:

The Mainland Travel Permit in that table is the Home Return Permit. The Bureau also accepts the version for non-Chinese citizens. If your permit has expired, you are not eligible for either automated mode, so check the date on the card before you think about apps.

The three-gate design is new. At gate one you show your document or your face. At gate two your fingerprint and facial image are collected and Hong Kong clears you out. At gate three Shenzhen clears you in. The Bureau says there are 134 of these lanes and 68 manual counters, and the manual counters also run on a queue-once basis.

How do you enrol in the Contactless e-Channel app?

The Contactless e-Channel app has existed since 1 December 2021, when the Immigration Department launched it at the airport, the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge and Shenzhen Bay. You enrol once, generate an encrypted QR code, and a camera checks your face. Huanggang adds a new use for the same enrolment. Here is the process as the Immigration Department describes it:

1. Check you are eligible. You must be a Hong Kong resident aged 11 or over who can already use e-Channel: a permanent resident with a smart identity card, or one of the other resident categories on the ImmD page.
2. Use a phone with biometric login. The 2021 launch notice says the app needs a smartphone with biometric authentication, meaning fingerprint or face recognition to open the phone.
3. Install two apps. Download "Contactless e-Channel" and "iAM Smart". The government's cross-boundary services page says to register with iAM Smart first, because the enrolment uses it to confirm who you are.
4. Log in and verify. Open the Contactless e-Channel app, log in with iAM Smart and follow the steps. For adults, that is the whole job.
5. Get consent for teenagers. For applicants aged 11 to 17, the ImmD page says the parent or legal guardian must open their own Contactless e-Channel app and select "Parent or legal guardian's consent" to finish the enrolment. The parent therefore needs the app too.

If you do not want the app, adults aged 18 or over can enrol at a designated Contactless e-Channel at a control point: insert your smart identity card, agree to the terms, take the card back, stand on the footprint marking and look at the camera. Or go to an enrolment office.

Where are the enrolment offices, and when are they open?

If you would rather have a person check your documents, or you are enrolling a child whose case is not straightforward, the offices are the place. These are the hours the Immigration Department lists for the offices closest to the Shenzhen crossings:

The airport, the bridge, Kai Tak Cruise Terminal and the China Ferry and Macau Ferry terminals have offices too. Two practical notes. The border offices close at 4:30 or 5 pm, so an evening crossing is too late to enrol at a desk. And the headquarters office is closed at weekends and on public holidays, which rules it out for most people who work office hours.

Huanggang is not on the list yet. The Bureau names enrolment offices as one of the four routes, but no office at the new port is listed on the ImmD page, which makes sense for a building that has not opened. Expect that to change once it does.

What about children?

This is where families will get stuck, because three different age lines apply to three different things.

• Age 7: the youngest a Hong Kong resident can use the Huanggang automated lanes, in document reading mode, with an identity card and a valid Home Return Permit.
• Age 11: the youngest who can enrol in the Contactless e-Channel app, with a parent's consent until 18.
• Age 14: the youngest who can use face scan at Huanggang.

Children aged 7 to 10 have been able to use Hong Kong's ordinary e-Channels since 31 March 2025, and the ImmD 2025 review says about 1.08 million of them had done so by the end of that year. The ImmD page sets conditions for that age group at the existing crossings: a smart identity card, a valid HKSAR passport, and a height of at least 1.1 metres. Whether the same passport and height conditions apply at Huanggang's document reading lanes has not been published. The Bureau's FAQ asks only for the identity card and the Mainland Travel Permit.

Our advice for a first family trip: send the adults and any teenager over 14 through face scan, and take anyone younger to a counter unless you have confirmed their eligibility at an enrolment office beforehand. A queue-once counter is still faster than a child stuck between gate one and gate two. The crossing with kids page has the rest of the family logistics.

Does your existing e-Channel enrolment carry over?

Probably not in full, and nobody has said it does. The Huanggang lanes are run jointly by both sides, and each lane has to pass your identity details, facial image and fingerprint from the Hong Kong gate to the Shenzhen gate. According to RTHK, Mr Kwok said first-time users will take slightly longer than usual because they have to consent to data sharing and agree to the use of facial recognition. That consent step is new, and it does not exist at Lo Wu or the Spur Line today.

So if you already use e-Channel at the other crossings, treat your first Huanggang crossing as an enrolment trip. Go at a quiet time, not on a Sunday evening, and give yourself a few extra minutes at the gate. The Bureau's FAQ says the two sides do not share their databases with each other, so do not assume one side's records will fill in the other's.

What can you do this week?

The port has no confirmed date. The Standard reported on 18 September that both governments are aiming for Monday 12 October, after Golden Week, and the Security Secretary has said the fourth quarter. That still leaves time to get ready:

1. Check your Home Return Permit expiry. Nothing else matters if it has run out. Renewal takes time, so start now if it is close.
2. Set up iAM Smart if you do not have it. It is the gate to the app enrolment.
3. Enrol in the Contactless e-Channel app, and do the parent consent step for any child aged 11 to 17.
4. Watch for the new registration app. When the Immigration Department announces it, we will update this page and the port guide.
5. Keep Golden Week on the old routes. The port is not expected to be open for the holiday. The holiday crossing page has the busy days.

One last point for the day itself: once you are inside the port, your phone roams onto a mainland network. The Bureau's usage tips say to call the Hong Kong Police reporting centre on 00852-3661-1733 in an emergency, rather than 999, which is not reliable once you have roamed. Free Wi-Fi.HK is available. If you rely on your phone for the QR code, sort out data for Shenzhen before you go.

How this compares with the other self-service lanes

Face-based clearance is spreading across Hong Kong's ports, and the names are easy to mix up. The airport's Face Easy e-Channel, launched in September 2025, lets eligible residents arrive without showing documents; the ImmD review says about 260,000 had enrolled by December 2025. At the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge, a walk-through departure lane opened on 25 June 2026 for permanent residents who use that port at least 10 times in 90 days, also enrolled through the Contactless e-Channel app. Huanggang is different from both: it is the first land crossing to Shenzhen where one lane clears you for both sides.

The Immigration Department's new "Go Hong Kong" app, launched on 16 September, is not for you. It lets frequent overseas visitors who fly into Hong Kong pre-enrol for e-Channel. If a friend forwards it as "the Huanggang app", it is not.

Key facts

• 1 December 2021: Contactless e-Channel app launched.
• 31 March 2025: children aged 7 to 10 allowed to use Hong Kong e-Channels.
• 25 June 2026: walk-through departure lane opens at the bridge port.
• 5 September 2026: Director of Immigration says a new registration app for Huanggang facial recognition will be announced.
• 18 September 2026: The Standard reports a 12 October target opening for Huanggang. Not officially confirmed.
• 24 September 2026: no new registration app announced. Contactless e-Channel app, kiosks, the lanes and enrolment offices are the listed routes.

Hours, fares, and rules move. Check ImmD, the Security Bureau, or the operator the morning you travel.