Mauritania e-Visa for Indian Citizens: Approved Online, Paid in Cash at the Border

Mauritania has built a visa process that is half modern and half nineteenth century, and the join between the two halves is where travellers come unstuck.

The modern half: you apply online through the national agency’s portal, upload nothing more exotic than passport details and a travel plan, and receive an electronic visa with a QR code that you print. No embassy, no interview. The other half: you do not pay online. The fee is collected in cash when you arrive, in euros or US dollars, and the UK government’s advice on Mauritania states it about as bluntly as a government ever does — change is not given, and receipts are not issued.

So the practical instruction for a Mauritania trip is unusually concrete: bring the exact amount, in clean notes, in a currency that is not the rupee, and do not assume you can break a larger bill at the immigration desk.

The door that closed in January 2025

Until the start of 2025 there were three ways into Mauritania: a visa from an embassy, a visa on arrival at Nouakchott, or nothing at all if you were exempt. On 5 January 2025 the first two were shut. Every visa-required traveller now has to hold an approved e-visa before boarding, and it is reported that from mid-2025 Mauritanian embassies stopped issuing traditional sticker visas altogether and began directing all applicants to the online platform.

This matters because a great deal of the Mauritania advice still circulating was written for the old system and describes an airport visa counter that no longer serves you. Airlines will refuse to board a passenger without an approved e-visa, and that refusal happens in Delhi or Casablanca or Dakar, long before anyone in Nouakchott can be reasonable about it. India’s Ministry of External Affairs lists Mauritania under e-Visa, with effect from 5 January 2025, and does not list it under visa on arrival.

Mauritania prices your passport by region

Most countries charge everyone the same, or single out a handful of nationalities. Mauritania publishes a two-column fee table split by where the applicant comes from. Applicants from the Arab world and Africa pay less at every tier; everyone else pays the higher column, and an Indian passport sits in the higher column.

• 30 days: EUR 55 or US$60 for an Indian applicant, against EUR 40 or US$45 in the lower column.
• 90 days: EUR 95 or US$100, against EUR 70 or US$75.
• One year: EUR 190 or US$200, against EUR 135 or US$145.

There is nothing to be done about the column you are in — it is worth knowing only so that a fifty-five-euro demand at the desk does not read as an attempt to overcharge you when a fellow traveller in the queue has just paid forty. Longer multi-year categories exist above these tiers.

Getting the cash part right

Since the fee is settled at the border rather than online, the arrival is the part to rehearse. A few things follow from the rule as the UK government states it.

• Bring the exact figure. EUR 55 for a thirty-day visa means a fifty and a five, not a hundred-euro note with an expectation of forty-five back. No change is given.
• Bring euros or dollars, and bring them from home. The fee is quoted in those two currencies. Arriving with only rupees or only a card leaves you with no way to pay for the visa you have already been approved for.
• Expect no receipt. If you need documentation of the spend for an employer or a claim, that is a problem to solve before you travel, not at the desk.
• Bring the printout. The approved visa carries a QR code and is meant to be printed and presented to security personnel on arrival, alongside giving biometrics at the point of entry.

The short version

• No visa on arrival since 5 January 2025. The e-visa is the only way in.
• Apply at the ANRPTS portal on anrpts.gov.mr, reached from an official page rather than a search advert.
• Apply early. The system is young and governments advise leaving plenty of time.
• An Indian passport pays the higher fee column: EUR 55 or US$60 for thirty days.
• You pay at the border, not online, in exact cash euros or dollars.
• No change, no receipt. Bring the precise amount in clean notes.
• Print the QR-coded approval and expect to give biometrics at entry.
• Yellow fever certificate for the journey home — ten days to become valid.

Very few Indian travellers go to Mauritania, and those who do tend to be going somewhere specific: the Banc d’Arguin, the old caravan towns of the Adrar, or the iron ore train across the desert. It is not a difficult country to enter. It is simply one where the last hundred metres of the process runs on cash, and the traveller who read only the online half of the instructions is the one holding up the queue.