ATF eForm Fingerprint Requirements: The Complete Reference

The ATF's fingerprint requirements for eForm 1 and eForm 4 submissions are narrow and publicly documented: the agency publishes the card instructions, the FBI publishes the file-format specification, and NIST publishes the parent standard. What makes them hard to find isn't that they're secret; it's that they're spread across three agencies and four specification documents. requirements break down into four groups: what goes on the physical FD-258 card, what the fingerprint impressions themselves need to look like, what the scan has to be, and what the resulting EFT file has to carry.

The requirements at a glance

• Card: FBI Standard Fingerprint Form FD-258, with the required identifying fields filled in (name, date of birth, place of birth, sex, race, height, weight, eye and hair color, Social Security number if known), the correct ATF Originating Agency Identifier (ORI), and a reason fingerprinted that identifies the NFA purpose.
• Impressions: Ten rolled impressions (one per finger) and four plain impressions (both thumbs and two four-finger slaps), captured so each ridge structure is visible.
• Scan: 500 pixels per inch or higher, 8-bit grayscale, saved in a lossless format (PNG or TIFF). See What DPI do I need to scan a fingerprint card? for the configuration walkthrough.
• EFT file: .eft extension, conformant to the FBI's Electronic Biometric Transmission Specification (EBTS), transaction type FAUF in the Type-1 record, fingerprint images in Type-4 or Type-14 records, file size under 12 MB.

Everything below is the detail behind each line.

The physical card: FD-258

The ATF requires fingerprints on the FBI Standard Fingerprint Form FD-258, the same physical card used across federal fingerprint-based background checks. The ATF publishes official instructions and a completed example for filling out the card in the NFA context. Cards can be ordered from the ATF Distribution Center; pre-printed cards for NFA transfers come with the ATF ORI already in the correct field.

The card carries three categories of information, all of which the FBI uses when it receives the fingerprints.

Identifying information

Printed in the header at the top of the card:

• Name (NAM). Full name with no abbreviations.
• Signature and residence of person fingerprinted.
• Aliases (AKA). If applicable.
• Date of birth (DOB) in month-day-year format.
• Place of birth (POB).
• Sex.
• Race.
• Height, weight, eye color, and hair color. Valid values for eye color (EYE) and hair color (HAI) are defined by FBI standards. For a list of conformant codes, see the NCIC Code Manual.
• Social Security number (SOC). Required on the card if known to the subject.
• Citizenship.

Agency and reason information

Identifying why the prints were taken and which agency is submitting them:

• Originating Agency Identifier (ORI). The nine-character code identifying the submitting agency. For NFA firearm transfers submitted through ATF eForms, the ORI is WVATF0800 (ATF National Tracing Center, Martinsburg, WV). For ATF explosives applications the ORI is WVATF0900. Pre-printed ATF cards come with the correct ORI in the field; blank cards have to have it filled in.
• Agency name, city, and state. Matching the ORI.
• Reason fingerprinted. Free-text field identifying the purpose. "NFA Application", "ATF Form 1 Application", or "For the transfer and registration of a suppressor" are all acceptable per the ATF's published FD-258 instructions.
• Employer and address. If applicable.

Fingerprint impressions

The biometric content of the card, covered in the next section.

The fingerprint impressions themselves

An FD-258 card carries two kinds of impressions, and the FBI expects both:

• Ten rolled impressions. One per finger, rolled nail-edge to nail-edge so the full ridge structure at the sides of the finger is captured. These are the impressions the FBI's matcher relies on to extract minutiae: the ridge endings and bifurcations that identify a print.
• Four plain (flat) impressions. Both thumbs printed independently, and a four-finger "slap" impression of the index-through-little fingers on each hand. These are used to verify that the rolled impressions are attributed to the right fingers. If a rolled impression doesn't align with the slap, something is mis-indexed on the card.

The requirement is not just that the fourteen blocks are filled in; it's that each impression is legible enough for the ridge structure to resolve. Over-inked blobs, smeared prints, and partial impressions are the common failure modes. The fingerprint quality check guide covers evaluation; the rolling guide covers technique.

There is no published "ATF fingerprint quality threshold" as such. The FBI's matcher decides whether a submission resolves. NIST's NFIQ 2 (NIST Fingerprint Image Quality) algorithm predicts whether it will, and is the tool SLAP & ROLL and many other systems use to flag weak prints before submission. See the NFIQ scores guide for a full explanation of how the algorithm works and what the scores mean.

The scan: 500 PPI, grayscale, lossless

When an FD-258 is scanned to produce an EFT file, whether by a home flatbed, a dealer's scanner, or a livescan device, the image has to meet a minimum resolution. The authoritative source is NIST's ANSI/NIST-ITL 1-2011 ("Data Format for the Interchange of Fingerprint, Facial & Other Biometric Information"), which defines the interchange floor for fingerprint records as 19.69 pixels per millimeter ±0.20 ppmm, or 500 PPI ±5 PPI. The FBI's Electronic Biometric Transmission Specification (EBTS) inherits that floor.

The core scanner configuration requirements are:

• Resolution: 500 PPI floor; 600 DPI recommended for margin. A 500-PPI-exact scan from a consumer flatbed can drift below the floor due to sensor calibration.
• Color mode: 8-bit grayscale. The FBI's matcher and the WSQ (Wavelet Scalar Quantization) compression used in EFT files are both designed for 8-bit grayscale.
• File format: PNG or TIFF. Lossless. JPEG introduces block artifacts around the high-contrast edges that are exactly what fingerprint ridges look like to the encoder.

The depth walkthrough, including settings paths in every major scanner utility, is in What DPI do I need to scan a fingerprint card?

The EFT file

An EFT file (Electronic Fingerprint Transmission file) is the digital artifact the ATF eForms portal accepts as a replacement for mailing paper fingerprint cards. The portal's requirements for the file are narrow and consistent.

• File extension: .eft. The portal recognizes the file by extension; a correctly-formatted transaction saved as .txt or .dat is not accepted.
• Conformant to the FBI's EBTS specification. The Electronic Biometric Transmission Specification is published by the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) division, profiles the broader ANSI/NIST-ITL 1-2011 standard, and defines which records, fields, and values are acceptable for submission to the FBI's biometric systems. EBTS-conformant means: the file parses as an ANSI/NIST-ITL transaction, contains the records EBTS requires, populates the fields EBTS requires, and uses values EBTS permits.
• Transaction type FAUF in the Type-1 record. FAUF (Federal Applicant User Fee) is the EBTS transaction-type code the ATF eForms system expects in field 1.004 of the Type-1 header record for NFA fingerprint submissions. Files tagged with any other transaction type are routed through a different pipeline on the FBI side and are not recognized as ATF eForm submissions.
• Fingerprint images in Type-4 or Type-14 records. Type-4 is the older fixed-resolution (500 PPI) grayscale fingerprint-image record, always compressed with WSQ. Type-14 is the newer variable-resolution record and can use WSQ or JPEG 2000 compression. Both are currently accepted by the ATF eForms portal; neither is a better or worse submission. The EFT file format guide walks through the record structure field by field.
• Demographic fields populated in the Type-2 record. Name, date of birth, and other identifying data carried in EBTS-defined Type-2 fields. On upload, the portal parses these and displays them back to the filer for verification against the responsible person record.
• File size under 12 MB. The ATF eForms portal enforces a 12 MB ceiling on uploaded EFT files. Standard 500 PPI WSQ-compressed EFT files for an FD-258 card come in well under 1 MB, so the ceiling is not a practical constraint for correctly-configured generators; it's a ceiling that catches files built with uncompressed or miscompressed images.

The portal validates the uploaded file on receipt. If it parses and the demographic fields match what the filer enters on the form, the portal displays a "validation status: valid" message and the upload counts as the fingerprint submission for that responsible person. If the file fails to parse or the demographics don't resolve, the portal returns an error and prompts the filer to retry.

The demographics carried in the file

The same demographic data printed on the physical FD-258 is what the EFT file has to carry inside its Type-2 (User-Defined Descriptive Text) record. The ATF eForms portal reads these fields on upload and displays them for verification:

• Name.
• Date of birth.
• Place of birth.
• Sex.
• Race.
• Height and weight.
• Eye color and hair color.
• Citizenship.
• Social Security number (if provided; optional from the FBI's side but required by some submitting agencies).
• Reason fingerprinted.

If the demographic data in the EFT file doesn't match the responsible person record the filer enters on the eForm, the portal's validation returns an error. This is the most common reason an otherwise-valid EFT file is rejected at upload: the name on the file is "John Q. Public" and the name on the form is "John Quincy Public", or the DOB in the file is off by a digit from the DOB the filer typed. The rule is: demographics in the file match demographics on the form, to the character.

Where each requirement comes from

The requirements on this page come from three agencies. Knowing which agency owns which piece helps when something changes or a source needs re-checking.

The ATF

The ATF operates the eForms portal, and while the FD-258 card is an FBI standard, the fields that must be filled out are specific to the ATF (such as the ORI and NFA-specific reason). The ATF's FD-258 fingerprint card instructions are the authoritative source for these fields, the ORI, and the reason-fingerprinted field. The ATF eForms portal is the authoritative source for what the portal accepts on upload: the .eft extension, the 12 MB ceiling, and the demographic-match validation rule.

The FBI

The FBI owns the file format. The FBI's Electronic Biometric Transmission Specification (EBTS) is the authoritative source for the record types, the transaction-type codes (including FAUF), the WSQ and JPEG 2000 compression rules, and the image-quality specifications. The current published version is EBTS v11. Appendix F of the EBTS, the FBI's Image Quality Specifications (IQS), is what certifies a capture device for use with the FBI's Next Generation Identification (NGI) system, the biometric matcher that processes these submissions.

NIST

NIST owns the parent standard. NIST publishes ANSI/NIST-ITL 1-2011, the broader interchange standard EBTS is a profile of, and NFIQ 2, the fingerprint-quality algorithm that predicts whether a print will match. NIST's NISTIR 8382 report documents the NFIQ 2 algorithm and its 500 PPI calibration.

Requirements reference table

Requirement	Value	Source
Card form	FBI Standard Fingerprint Form FD-258	ATF FD-258 instructions
ORI (NFA firearms transfers)	WVATF0800	ATF FD-258 instructions
ORI (ATF explosives)	WVATF0900	ATF FD-258 instructions
Rolled impressions	10 (one per finger)	FD-258 card standard
Plain impressions	4 (both thumbs + two four-finger slaps)	FD-258 card standard
Scan resolution	500 PPI minimum (±5 PPI)	ANSI/NIST-ITL 1-2011 / EBTS
Color depth	8-bit grayscale	EBTS / WSQ spec
File extension	.eft	ATF eForms portal
Transaction type	FAUF (field 1.004)	EBTS
Fingerprint record type	Type-4 or Type-14 (both accepted)	EBTS
Compression	WSQ (Type-4); WSQ or JPEG 2000 (Type-14)	EBTS
Maximum file size	12 MB	ATF eForms portal