What BLS International and VFS Global are
They’re private companies, what the regulation calls external service providers, contracted by the consulates of several Schengen countries (Spain among them) to handle the administrative side of receiving visa applications in countries where the consulate has decided to outsource that work. They aren’t an embassy, aren’t a public body, and have no say whatsoever in whether your visa is ultimately approved or refused.
What they can and cannot do, with the legal basis
Article 43 of Regulation (EC) 810/2009 (the EU Visa Code) governs exactly this. External providers like BLS or VFS can handle:
- Giving general information on visa requirements and application forms.
- Informing applicants about required documents based on a checklist.
- Collecting your data and application, including biometric identifiers (fingerprints and photo), and passing it all on to the consulate.
- Collecting the visa fee.
- Managing appointments, both at their own centre and for appearing in person at the consulate if needed.
- Returning your passport once the process is resolved, including a refusal notice if that’s the outcome.
What the same article explicitly bans them from doing is the important part: examining the application, the interview (where there is one), the decision on the application, and printing and affixing the visa sticker are the consulate’s job alone. No BLS or VFS employee has any influence over whether you get the visa or not, and anyone who suggests otherwise in exchange for extra payment is lying to you.
How much they can charge in service fees
On top of the official Schengen visa fee (€90 since 11 June 2024, for adults), the centre charges its own service fee for handling the process. Article 17(4) of the same Visa Code sets a legal cap: the service fee cannot exceed half the visa fee: at the current €90 fee, that’s a maximum of €45. There’s one exception: in third countries where the responsible member state has no consulate of its own, the cap rises to up to €80, extendable to €120 in exceptional cases the country has to notify to the European Commission. If you’re charged more than the cap that applies to your situation, that’s legitimate grounds for a complaint.
Corridors already verified on VisaRadar
For several of the passport-and-destination pairs we’ve researched in depth, we already have official confirmation of where the Spain Schengen visa is actually processed:
- Ecuador → Spain: BLS International, with centres in Quito and Guayaquil, though the Guayaquil consulate only grants tourism appointments in exceptional cases.
- Bolivia → Spain: BLS International, in La Paz and Santa Cruz.
- Dominican Republic → Spain: BLS International, in Santo Domingo.
- Cuba → Spain: this one’s different: processing happens directly at the Consulate General of Spain in Havana, with no outsourced centre. If this is your case, don’t go looking for a BLS or VFS centre: there isn’t one for this corridor.
If your specific corridor isn’t on this list, check the centre that applies via the official website of the Spanish consulate or embassy covering your place of residence, because it varies by where you live, not just by nationality.
BLS and VFS aren’t the same company, even though they do the same kind of work
They’re two separate, competing companies, each contracted country by country (and sometimes consular post by consular post) by the various Schengen states. Which one handles your case doesn’t depend on your nationality in the abstract, but on which external provider Spain’s consulate (or another Schengen country’s, if your visa is for elsewhere) has contracted in the country where you live. Functionally they do the same job, with the same allowed and banned tasks under Article 43, so neither is “better” than the other for your chances of getting the visa, because neither one decides anything.
How to find out which centre applies to you
As the Ecuador example shows, this can vary even within a single country depending on your province or consular district, not just your nationality. The only reliable way to check is the official website of the Spanish consulate or embassy covering where you live, which normally links directly to the relevant external centre if there is one, rather than assuming the centre a friend used in a different city or country is the same one that applies to you.
Practical tips
- Book your appointment only through the official website of the relevant centre (the domain is usually something like
[country].blsspainvisa.comor VFS’s equivalent), because third-party sites imitate these portals and charge extra fees without warning, the same pattern we see with plenty of e-Visas. - Every BLS centre operates cashless: card or online payment only. Be wary of anyone asking for cash “to speed up” your appointment or application.
- The service fee paid when booking is non-refundable, whether the visa is later approved or refused, so keep that in mind before booking if you’re unsure about your documentation.
- Keep the receipt for every payment, both the visa fee and the service fee.
- “Premium” add-ons (priority handling, passport delivery to your address, and so on) are optional, not a requirement for your application to be processed normally.
Guide verified 04/09/2026. Sources: Regulation (EC) 810/2009 (EU Visa Code), Art. 43 (tasks external providers can and can’t perform) and Art. 17(4) (service fee cap), accessed via legislation.gov.uk; official European Commission notice on the Schengen visa fee rising to €90 from 11 June 2024; corridor data verified and published on VisaRadar’s pair pages (Ecuador, Bolivia, Dominican Republic, Cuba).