Since 27 April 2026 a paper application for a residence card is not accepted. Not by post, not at a counter. The only route is the MOS portal (Moduł Obsługi Spraw), and it covers the temporary residence card, permanent residence and EU long-term resident status alike. The system is new, and people get stuck in the same seven places.
In short: filing usually stalls not because of a document error but because of three things: no profil zaufany, an unsigned Załącznik nr 1 from the employer, or a missing payment confirmation - the portal takes no money at all, the opłata skarbowa is paid separately by bank transfer. Each of these clears in a day or two once you know where to look.
Here they are in the order they normally hit you.
1. Without a profil zaufany You Cannot Log In
MOS has no login and password of its own. Access runs through login.gov.pl, and you confirm your identity with one of the state methods: profil zaufany, e-dowód or mObywatel. There is no "email and password" registration in the portal, and there won't be one.
Which brings the first wall: a profil zaufany is issued against a PESEL number. And someone who has just arrived and is about to apply for a first card usually has no PESEL yet.
The way through is the right order of steps:
- Register your address (meldunek) at the Urząd Dzielnicy for where you live. In Warsaw that is the meldunek desk of your district.
- Get the PESEL together with the meldunek. Where there are no grounds for a meldunek, a PESEL can be obtained separately by stating the purpose - filing a residence application.
- Activate the profil zaufany. The fastest route is online banking: PKO BP, Santander, mBank, Pekao, ING and Millennium confirm the profile immediately, with no trip to an office.
More on this step in our breakdown of PESEL, profil zaufany and mDowód.
One group sits outside this path: board members of a sp. z o.o. without a PESEL who handle applications for foreign staff. A profil zaufany is not available to them, and only a qualified electronic signature bought from a Polish provider will work.
2. Not Everyone Can Open an Account
The account is opened by the foreigner, provided they are an adult. For a minor it is opened by a parent, guardian or curator. That is the whole list.
Which means the "let HR file it for me" arrangement no longer works. An assistant can fill the form in beside you, but logging in and signing is off limits: the login is tied to your own profil zaufany, and sharing it is prohibited by the portal's own terms.
The practical consequence for families: every adult needs their own account and their own profil zaufany. A husband cannot file for his wife from his login. Children go through a parent's account, as separate cases.
3. Załącznik nr 1 Sits Unsigned
This is the longest dead end, and it is not in your hands.
Załącznik nr 1 is the employer's form: PKD, NIP, REGON, KRS, job title, gross salary. You cannot fill it in yourself. The mechanics: in your case file you enter the employer's email, MOS sends a link there, the employer opens it, fills it in and signs with their own profil zaufany. The załącznik attaches itself to your wniosek, and you get a notification that the application is ready to submit.
The link lives 30 days. Not signed within that window and you request a new one.
Where it usually breaks:
- The employer has no profil zaufany. Common in small firms where the director has never signed anything electronically. Half an hour through their online banking fixes it, but someone has to tell them.
- The email landed in spam. MOS sends from a government domain and corporate filters sometimes cut it. Ask them to check spam before you resend.
- The wrong address was entered. The accountant's personal mailbox instead of the work one, a typo in the domain. The link went nowhere and you are still waiting.
- PKD entered from memory. The main activity code has to match CEIDG or KRS. The voivode will spot a mismatch and issue a request to supplement, which adds two to three weeks.
One thing experience teaches: don't send the Załącznik nr 1 request on a Friday evening. Send it early in the week and write to HR separately the same day, in your own words. The system email reads like a mailing list and is easy to scroll past.
4. The Wniosek Won't Sign
Signing is a separate action once every field is filled and every file uploaded. The system runs validation first, highlights what's missing, and only then offers the signature button.
There are three ways to sign: profil zaufany, a qualified electronic signature, or podpis osobisty from an e-dowód.
What gets in the way most often:
- The session expired. You spent an hour on the form, and the confirmation in profil zaufany is requested on an already-stale session. Save the draft, log out, log back in and sign straight away.
- The profile expired. A profil zaufany runs for three years. If yours dates to 2023, check the expiry in your panel on gov.pl before you start.
- An ad blocker or strict privacy mode. The hop to login.gov.pl and back breaks when an extension blocks the redirect. Open the portal in a window with no extensions.
- Mismatched names. The name in your profil zaufany and the name on the wniosek have to match letter for letter, including the transliteration from your passport. After a name change, update the profile before you file.
5. Two People, One Computer
A complaint that comes back regularly: husband and wife file on the same evening from the same laptop, and the system "mixes them up".
It mixes nothing up - that is the login.gov.pl session. The browser is holding the first person's login, so the second one lands in someone else's account or gets an authorisation error.
Easy fix: between the two applications log out of MOS, log out of login.gov.pl, and clear cookies for that domain. Or file the second case in an incognito window or a different browser. As a bonus, the other person's notifications stop arriving.
6. The Portal Takes No Payment
This is where almost everyone gets lost, because the logic runs against expectation: MOS handles no payments at all. No basket, no card, no "pay now" button.
You pay separately, by ordinary bank transfer:
- Opłata skarbowa for the permit itself - between PLN 340 and PLN 640 depending on the type. PLN 340 for temporary residence on general grounds, more for permanent residence and EU long-term resident status.
- PLN 100 for issuing the card - a separate transfer, usually after a positive decision.
The account is the one held by the city office for the place of filing; in Warsaw that is the Urząd Miasta Stołecznego Warszawy account for opłaty skarbowe. The transfer title carries your first name, surname and what the payment covers. The bank confirmation (a PDF or a screenshot showing the details and the date) is attached to the wniosek like any other document.
Two questions come up constantly:
Can an employer or a relative pay? Yes. But the transfer title has to carry the applicant's name rather than the payer's, or the payment won't be matched to your case.
Do you need a Polish bank account? No, the transfer can come from anywhere. Paying from a foreign bank, allow two to three days for it to clear and keep the confirmation showing the date it was sent.
7. The Draft Vanished, No Confirmation Came
Two different situations that get confused with each other.
A draft is kept for 45 days. You started filling it in, paused to collect documents, came back two months later - and the case is gone. That is not a fault, that is the retention period. If your document gathering runs long, log in once a month.
After filing, the status changes to "przesłany" and a UPO arrives - Urzędowe Poświadczenie Odbioru, carrying the case number. That is your key document: from the moment of the UPO your stay is legal, even if your visa or previous card expires the next day.
If no UPO arrives within a day, open the case in the portal and check the status. Still showing "robocza" means the signature did not go through and the application was never filed, whatever the screen looked like when you hit send. This is worth checking immediately: the gap between "I filed" and "I thought I filed" is measured in the legality of your stay.
Download the zaświadczenie o złożeniu wniosku separately. It replaced the passport stamp and your employer and the border guard will both ask for it. More in our piece on the passport stamp and waiting for the card.
What Happens Once the Wniosek Is In
Next comes biometrics: fingerprints and a signature sample are given in person, and the summons arrives through eDoręczenia. Then the wait for a decision, and here the statutory 60 days and the real timeline in Mazowieckie are two different things. What to do about that is covered in our pieces on checking your case status and on speeding things up with a ponaglenie.
The full procedure from registration to collecting the card is in our step-by-step MOS 2.0 guide, and the whole residence procedure in the karta pobytu 2026 overview.
This article is informational and does not replace individual legal advice. If your application has stalled, a request to supplement has arrived, or you are unsure about your grounds, book us to handle your karta pobytu case - we will review the file and carry the submission through to the UPO.
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