The chip has at least the same information that is printed in machine readable format on the photo page. It has all the same fields in one or two lines with "<

The chip has at least the same information that is printed in machine readable format on the photo page. It has all the same fields in one or two lines with "<" field separators. I've had the chip read, I've also seen the passport being scanned to read those lines. A passport has two components, one is identification of the holder, the other is the travel (entry/exit stamps) history and potentially the conditions of entry (visas etc).