@bitman @blinry @piko I'll start with that only if they have the 3 square alingnment boxes in the corners is it a QR code. Most of the data on said cards from what I can see from a google search is not in a QR Code format, but a variant of PDF417 (this is not the same PDF as the file format from adobe). Such a format is a bit more complex than QR Code with using a base 929 encoding of the data.
@bitman @blinry @piko
Said PDF417 is used by quite a few governments for government ID data, including "RealID" by US Homeland Security on US driving licences and Israel uses it on their visa documents. It is a format designed for being read by uncordinated linear scan rather than image sensor. I doubt the image is actually stored on the card in that data, but a reference to where to find the image in government database.