This page is not built from the Treasury's catalogue. The only identity card in that catalogue is the seafarers' card, at 20,000 FCFA. There is no national identity card record. The figures below are read from the tax code, from the ordinance that amended it, and from what the issuing authority publishes.
The stamp duty has two official values
The 2026 edition of the General Tax Code prints article 549 twice. The two printings do not agree.
| Where in the volume | What that text is | Stamp duty |
|---|---|---|
| Body, page 164 | The 2023 Finance Law text, not marked as superseded | 1,000 FCFA |
| Annex, page 358 | The June 2024 ordinance, not marked as current | 10,000 FCFA |
The annex reproduces Ordinance No. 2024/001 of 20 June 2024, which amended articles 470 bis, 548, 549 and 549 bis. The body of the volume reproduces the 2023 Finance Law, Law No. 2022/020 of 27 December 2022. We checked that against our own copy of the 2023 law: its article 549 leaves the identity card line as "sans changement", and the rest of its schedule matches the body of the 2026 code word for word.
So the official consolidated tax code ships the 2023 state of the article and the 2024 state of the article, in the same file, with nothing to say which governs. The 2026 Finance Law did not touch either article.
The ordinance is the later instrument, and on ordinary principles it wins. We say that as a reading rather than a finding, because the document that is supposed to settle it is the one that contradicts itself.
Worth knowing about the annex: it is headed "ORDONNANCE DU JUIN 2024", with no number and no day of the month. We obtained the number and the date from the Presidency's own filing, not from the tax code.
What it was before, and what the police said
Every press account of June 2024 says the stamp went from 2,800 FCFA to 10,000 FCFA. We have not found 2,800 in any version of article 549 we hold. The body of the 2026 code says 1,000. So the figure the whole country used before 2024 does not match the tax code either.
Then the issuing authority contradicted the ordinance. Within days of the signature, with police units already asking for the new amount, the Délégation Générale à la Sûreté Nationale said that until further notice the price of the identity card was unchanged at 2,800 FCFA. That was reported in June 2024 by Lebledparle, which is a news site and not an authority. We have not found the DGSN notice itself.
So in June 2024 there were three live figures: 10,000 in the ordinance, 2,800 from the police, and 15,000 reported at some counters.
Where the 10,000 goes
Ordinance No. 2024/001 splits the identity card stamp duty like this, in its article thirty-seventh (ter).
| Who | Share | Of 10,000 FCFA |
|---|---|---|
| The contractor | 90% | 9,000 FCFA |
| The administration | 10% | 1,000 FCFA |
| The Treasury | Nothing | 0 FCFA |
The State collects none of it. The whole of a tax called a stamp duty is assigned to the company that makes the card and to the department that orders it. The contractor is Augentic GmbH, a German identity systems company working with the DGSN, as reported in June 2024.
That is the clearest reason to distrust the round numbers circulating. A charge that goes nine tenths to a contractor behaves like a price, and people describe it as one, but it is levied as a tax and you cannot decline it.
The issuing authority publishes no price
The DGSN website, read on 21 October 2026, describes the card in full and gives no amount anywhere. It cites Decree No. 2025/059 of 28 February 2025 on the characteristics and the issuing of identity documents. It states that the card is valid for ten years, that online pre-enrolment at idcam.cm is compulsory, and that the process "commence par le pré-enrôlement et le paiement du droit de timbre en ligne".
That last clause settles one dispute. What you pay online at pre-enrolment is the stamp duty itself, not a separate enrolment fee charged on top of it. At least one widely read guide, uniresa.com, publishes a 2,850 FCFA stamp plus 10,000 FCFA payable at online enrolment, which would make 12,850. The issuing authority describes one payment, not two.
We could not read idcam.cm. It returned HTTP 403 to an ordinary request on 21 October 2026. The DGSN pages returned HTTP 500 while still serving their content.
The 15,500 total does not hold up
The figure circulating as the real cost of an identity card is 15,500 FCFA, made of three parts. Each part is worth checking separately, and two of the three fail.
| Component | What we can source | Commonly published |
|---|---|---|
| Fiscal stamp | 10,000 in the annex, 1,000 in the body of the same code | 10,000 FCFA |
| Certificate of nationality | The Treasury publishes 2,000 FCFA | 3,500 FCFA |
| Certified copy of the birth certificate | No national figure exists | 2,000 FCFA |
On the certificate of nationality, the Treasury's own catalogue carries it at 2,000 FCFA, attributed to the Ministry of Justice. That figure is better evidenced than the 3,500, which is published by saimondy.com, camer.be, infospratiques.cm and others, none of which names a text.
But the Treasury's own citation does not survive a check. Our read of the catalogue attributes the certificate to article 44 of the 2026 Finance Law. We read that article in the enacted law. It is headed "Dispositions relatives aux recettes non fiscales issues du secteur de la Justice" and it institutes four things, all of them in prison administration: the hire of prison labour, prison production income, medical services in prison health centres, and training at the prison administration school. It prices prison labour and defers the rest to a ministerial text. The certificate of nationality is never named in it and 2,000 FCFA never appears.
What seems to have happened is visible in our own dated read. The same article number is attached to six Ministry of Justice services. Four of them are exactly the four that article 44 institutes. The other two, the certificate of nationality and judicial and extrajudicial acts, are not in it. One article number has been applied to a ministry's whole block.
So the 2,000 is the best figure available and its stated authority does not say what it is cited for.
One more thing about the 2,000. The Treasury catalogue is a catalogue of non tax revenue, and a stamp duty is a tax collected by the tax administration. The 2,000 is therefore the service fee payable for issuing the certificate, and any stamp sits on top of it as a separate line. That gives an arithmetic worth stating and labelling: the ordinary fiscal stamp is 1,500 FCFA, and 1,500 plus 2,000 is 3,500. The circulating 3,500 may well be the stamp and the fee added together rather than a rival figure for the same thing. That is our inference from two sourced numbers. No instrument says it, and we are not presenting it as a finding.
On the birth certificate, there is no single national price. Civil status documents are issued by the commune, and what a town hall charges for a certified copy is set locally. The national civil registration office publishes its own tariff, 2,500 FCFA for a copy of a record and 2,500 FCFA for an extract, but that is a different counter from your town hall.
So the honest statement is this. The stamp duty is 10,000 FCFA if you follow the ordinance, 1,000 FCFA if you follow the body of the tax code. The supporting documents cost whatever your court and your council charge. 15,500 is a plausible arithmetic sum of three numbers, two of which nobody can source.
What the card requires
The DGSN lists what you must bring. For a first application: a certified copy of the birth certificate, the extract, the court order standing in for it or the family booklet; a certified copy of the marriage certificate for a married woman; proof of occupation where applicable; and a certificate of nationality signed by the President of the Court of First Instance of the place where the card is issued.
The certificate of nationality is the item that drags a court fee into an identity card application. That is why it appears in every total, and it is also the component the published totals get wrong.
What this page does not tell you
What a counter will charge. How long it takes. Whether the 1,000 in the body of the tax code is ever applied in practice.
Sources
Read on 21 October 2026 unless another date is given.
- General Tax Code, 2026 editionour copy, impots.cm. Article 549 at page 164 and again at page 358. Archived in full.
- Ordinance No. 2024/001 of 20 June 2024 amending Law No. 2023/019 of 19 December 2023our copy, Finance Law for 2024. Filed at prc.cm. Article fifteenth (bis) for the stamp duty, article thirty-seventh (ter) for the split.
- Délégation Générale à la Sûreté Nationale, dgsn.cm, identity documents page, citing Decree No. 2025/059 of 28 February 2025.
- idcam.cm, the official pre-enrolment site. HTTP 403 on the day we tried.
- The Treasury's catalogue of payable services, read 18 October 2026, for the certificate of nationality at 2,000 FCFA and the civil registration office tariffs.
- Lebledparle, June 2024, for the DGSN statement that the price remained 2,800 FCFA.
- Vitrine du Cameroun, 22 June 2024, for the 90% share to Augentic GmbH. The percentage matches the ordinance we hold.
- saimondy.com, 23 June 2024, and camer.be, for the 15,500 total. Aggregators, not authorities.
- uniresa.com for the 2,850 plus 10,000 version. Aggregator.
There is no online Journal Officiel for Cameroon. prc.cm is the de facto gazette.
If a figure here is wrong, tell us. The method is written out at how we verify.
Page updated 21 October 2026