As a resident of a specific country that cannot help itself but cause wars and doom for all of its citizens, we do not have many countries that we can travel to visa-free. This is troublesome for many reasons, but usually, it all gets resolved within several weeks because you just book a visit to the embassy and submit your documents.
For example, when I applied for a Japanese student visa, I didn't even have to book an appointment. I just came to the embassy, submitted my documents, waited 2 weeks, and claimed my passport. This was easy, and I would recommend their embassy in Moscow to anyone, since all the Japanese workers there are really friendly and genuinely helpful. (Extra credit goes to the Russian security guy, who actually helped me fill out some documents that I did not understand.)
This system does not apply to many countries, however. They heavily rely on outsourced visa application handling, especially through VFS Global. In my humble opinion, VFS Global holds a monopoly in this sphere. Even with Japan, you can apply through VFS Global, but you don't have to. Really, I don't know why anyone would use VFS Global for a Japanese visa when their embassy does the job great (and for free).
While Japan gives you the option to go through your local VFS Global and wait at least a month for your visa, or fly to the embassy, a lot of countries just offload all the work to VFS Global without providing any other options.
Yes, the thought behind it is really good. VFS has a huge reach; they have locations all over the world, with several cities covered in a single country, while there is usually only one embassy in a country. This helps lower the workload for embassies, as well as cut costs.
Now, for the bad parts: their website is horrendous. It stutters, it blocks you after 5 requests, it puts you in a loading loop, and unnecessary Cloudflare bot prevention is on top of every page, while bots are still rampant and sell their services. When you finally manage to log in, it takes about 2 to 5 minutes for your email OTP to arrive. After that, it will take you another minute to load the locations. Every button press blocks all other buttons. After you finally select your location, you might already be banned for making too many requests. But if you aren't, you're finally at the page where you enter all your details, such as your passport information. And yes, there is no way to save this data; you will have to type it in every time. After you finally type all the details in, you are redirected to the booking date selection page. The data is not dynamically refreshed, so if you pick a date that is no longer available, good luck next time. Scrolling through the dates will also most likely cause you to get banned.
I have NEVER gotten past this point because, even with some automation, the bots are still faster due to all the loading and stuttering you have to go through. The sheer amount of bots simply outperforms you.
# Data breaches, monopoly, and extortion?
Back in 2014, VFS Global faced criticism in South Africa, where the government argued that VFS was providing monopolistic services, which I agree with. In 2019, Nigeria's government's Portfolio Committee on Home Affairs accused VFS Global of "extorting" and "mistreating" vulnerable visa applicants in developing countries such as Nigeria.
In May of 2026, VFS Global forced a French-speaking Quebec resident to go through their procedures completely in English, despite being legally obligated to provide services in both official languages of Canada. They didn't even apologize to the person.
There are many more controversies related to this Mumbai-based company, so why do countries still rely solely on it to provide visa services?
# Alternative
It is said that you must suggest solutions when you criticize, so I will do so.
First of all, as a country, or rather an embassy, you could start accepting appointments directly — not many, but some. Offload some of the work that has been offloaded to VFS. Second of all, partner up with more companies, for example TLScontact or BLS International.
And the third idea, the craziest one, which the embassy has nothing to do with: make e-visas. It's a crazy idea in a lobbied world, but we must move on from the past, adapt to the future, or something.
In the EU, it's hard for many reasons to introduce e-visas. First of all, there is, of course, lobbying. It's not a secret that all EU countries are heavily lobbied, and promoting something that does not benefit certain parties is practically impossible. However, I think everyone could benefit from e-visas.
The second issue with creating e-visas in the EU is the fact that you need to make them global and spread them over all European member states, which can be hard and time-consuming. This would probably be used as an argument by ChatGPT to oppose the idea of e-visas (I have checked, and it is), however, consider the fact that there is Sweden, and they have BankID, which is a system that locks you out of ALL Swedish services because it's only available to Swedish residents. You cannot use BankID without a personnummer, and you only get one if you're a registered tax resident.
I think that if one country starts adapting e-visas, many will follow. So why don't we start with some big and heavily influential country, such as France or, for example, Germany?