Interstate Licensing & PSYPACT: What Is PSYPACT & How Psychologists Practice

Under PSYPACT, licensed psychologists can provide telepsychology and short-term in-person services to clients in other participating states. They do not need to obtain a separate license in every participating state before providing care.

More than 40 states and territories now take part, with Alaska and Iowa among the newest to join.

Let’s explore how PSYPACT works, which states participate in 2026, who qualifies, what it costs, and the rules that decide where you can and cannot practice.

Why Did Interstate Licensing Change for Psychologists?

For most of the history of psychology, a license stopped at the state border. A psychologist licensed in Ohio could not legally treat a client sitting in Indiana, even over video, without a separate Indiana license. Interstate licensing through PSYPACT changed that.

PSYPACT was developed by the Association of State and Provincial Psychology Boards (ASPPB) and is governed by the PSYPACT Commission. Three points define what it actually is:

• It is a mutual-recognition compact. Your home-state license stays the foundation, and the compact grants added authority to practice in other member states.
• It applies only to doctoral-level licensed psychologists. It does not extend to counselors, social workers, marriage and family therapists, or prescribers.
• It covers two distinct activities: remote telepsychology and limited in-person practice, each with its own credential and its own rules.

What Is the History of PSYPACT?

PSYPACT was created to solve a problem that predated telehealth: patients and psychologists move, but licenses historically stayed fixed inside one state. The Association of State and Provincial Psychology Boards (ASPPB) approved the model legislation in 2015, and once enough states adopted it, the compact went live in 2020. It is now the most established of the three behavioral health compacts, ahead of the Counseling Compact and the Social Work Licensure Compact.

• 2015: The ASPPB Board of Directors approves the PSYPACT model legislation, and the first states begin introducing it.
• 2020: The compact reaches the threshold of enacting states and becomes operational. Psychologists can apply for the E.Passport, APIT, IPC, and TAP.
• 2021: Participation accelerates sharply as telehealth demand surges during the COVID-19 pandemic, and many states' laws take effect.
• 2022 to 2026: Adoption continues year by year, passing 40 participating jurisdictions and expanding into territories such as the Northern Mariana Islands, with Alaska and Iowa enacting legislation in mid-2026.

What began as a seven-state agreement now covers most of the country, and the remaining gaps are shrinking with each legislative session.

How PSYPACT Works

PSYPACT does not issue a national license. Instead, it lets you use your existing license from a participating home state to legally provide services to clients located in other participating jurisdictions. It primarily offers two types of authority:

• Authority to Practice Interjurisdictional Telepsychology (APIT): lets you conduct remote therapy across state lines. To qualify, you must obtain an E.Passport from the Association of State and Provincial Psychology Boards (ASPPB).
• Temporary Authorization to Practice (TAP): lets you provide face-to-face psychological services for up to 30 days per calendar year. This requires an Interjurisdictional Practice Certificate (IPC) from ASPPB.

Which one you need depends on how you plan to see clients. The table below compares the two side by side.

Many psychologists obtain only the telepsychology pathway. Some obtain both if they also travel to see clients in person. 

What Are the PSYPACT Participating States in 2026?

As of mid-2026, more than 40 jurisdictions participate fully in PSYPACT, including 40 states plus the District of Columbia and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. The map keeps moving. Alaska enacted PSYPACT legislation on June 25, 2026, and Iowa followed on July 1, 2026, with those additions pending the standard effective-date and Commission adoption steps.

Because participation changes during every legislative session, states fall into three practical categories.

Active Member States

These jurisdictions have enacted PSYPACT and it is in effect, so psychologists with the correct authorization can legally serve clients located here.

Prominent member states include Alabama, Colorado, Florida, Texas, and Virginia, alongside long-standing members such as Arizona, Georgia, Illinois, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and Utah, and more recent additions including Michigan, Mississippi, South Dakota, and Vermont.

States That Have Introduced or Recently Enacted Legislation

Introducing a bill is not the same as participating. You cannot practice under PSYPACT in a state that has only introduced legislation.

As of the 2025 and 2026 sessions, Hawaii, Massachusetts, and New York had introduced but not enacted PSYPACT, while Alaska and Iowa moved from introduced to enacted in mid-2026.

Non-Participating States

A handful of states and territories have neither enacted nor introduced active legislation. To see a client physically located in one of these places, a psychologist still needs a full license there. This group has recently included California, Guam, Louisiana, Oregon, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

The two authoritative, continuously updated sources are the PSYPACT State Map and the Official PSYPACT Directory, both at psypact.gov. Treat any printed list, including this one, as a snapshot.

Who Is Eligible for PSYPACT?

To qualify for PSYPACT, you must hold a full, unrestricted psychology license based on a doctoral degree, with your home state a participating PSYPACT jurisdiction. The core interstate licensing PSYPACT requirements are:

• A current, active, and unrestricted license to practice psychology at the independent level.
• A doctoral degree from a program that was accredited by the American Psychological Association (APA) or the Canadian Psychological Association (CPA), or designated as a psychology program by the ASPPB/National Register Joint Designation Committee, at the time the degree was awarded or within 18 months of conferral.
• A home state that is a participating PSYPACT jurisdiction.
• Attestations required by ASPPB and the PSYPACT Commission.

There are alternative educational pathways. Psychologists who have been continuously licensed since before January 1, 1985, may automatically meet the educational requirement for the E.Passport and IPC.

The same applies to psychologists who hold the Certificate of Professional Qualification (CPQ) after 15 years of continuous licensure, provided they earned their doctoral degree before January 1, 2000.

What Are the PSYPACT Credentials: E.Passport, APIT, IPC, and TAP?

Four acronyms do all the work in the PSYPACT system. Two come from ASPPB and two come from the PSYPACT Commission.

• E.Passport (ASPPB): verifies your credentials and is the prerequisite for telepsychology. Valid one year, renewed annually.
• APIT (PSYPACT Commission): the authorization granted after your E.Passport that actually permits interjurisdictional telepsychology.
• IPC (ASPPB): the Interjurisdictional Practice Certificate, the prerequisite for temporary in-person practice.
• TAP (PSYPACT Commission): the Temporary Authorization to Practice granted after your IPC that permits in-person work.

In short, ASPPB verifies you and issues the credential, and the PSYPACT Commission grants the authorization to practice.

What Is the PSYPACT Application Process?

Once you meet the eligibility requirements above, applying is a two-step process: obtain a credential from ASPPB, then obtain the matching authorization from the PSYPACT Commission. Everything runs through ASPPB's credentials portal, PSY|PRO, at psypro.org.

1. Confirm your home state participates. Check the official PSYPACT map and verify your license state is a full member.
2. Create or log in to a PSY|PRO account and select the activity that fits your goal: telepsychology (E.Passport/APIT) or temporary in-person practice (IPC/TAP).
3. Obtain your ASPPB credential. Complete the E.Passport or IPC application and pay the application fee. ASPPB verifies your doctoral transcripts, EPPP score, and active license.
4. Apply for your PSYPACT Commission authorization. Once your credential is approved, apply for APIT (telepsychology) or TAP (in-person practice) and provide the required attestations.
5. Confirm you appear in the official directory before you begin seeing clients.

Renewals for both pathways are handled in PSY|PRO, which sends automatic reminders 90, 60, and 30 days before expiration.

How Much Does PSYPACT Cost?

The telepsychology pathway costs $440 to start, and the temporary in-person pathway costs $240 to start. Renewals are annual. The table below breaks down each fee.

The PSYPACT Commission added annual renewals for both APIT and TAP in 2023, so all four credentials now renew each year.

Fees are subject to change, so confirm current amounts on the official ASPPB fee chart before you apply. Renewal also requires continuing education: each E.Passport renewal must include at least three hours of telehealth-related continuing education completed during the approval period.

What Are the Key PSYPACT Rules and Limitations?

PSYPACT expands where you can practice, but it comes with firm boundaries. The three that generate the most interstate licensing PSYPACT questions are telehealth location, the limit on temporary in-person practice, and jurisdiction.

These are not paperwork technicalities. Participating states share disciplinary information through the Coordinated Licensure Information System (CLIS), and a receiving or distant state can take adverse action against your authorization under its own laws, then report that action back to your home state.

A violation in one state can therefore follow you across the whole compact. The three sections below cover where most compliance problems start.

Where Must You Be Located for PSYPACT Telehealth?

When you deliver telepsychology under APIT, you must be physically located in your declared home state, the state where you are licensed, while your client is located in another participating PSYPACT state.

If you travel and log in from a beach in a non-member state, the session may fall outside PSYPACT's protection. Location, not residence, is what matters.

In practice, that rule plays out like this:

• Your home state is the participating state where you hold your license and are physically present during the session. You declare it in PSY|PRO and can update it if you relocate to another participating state.
• The client's physical location at the moment of service is what counts. If a client travels into a non-participating state and logs in from there, your APIT does not cover that session.
• Your own travel matters too. Logging in from a vacation in a non-member state generally means you cannot deliver APIT telepsychology from there, even to a client sitting in a participating state.

How Long Can You Practice In-Person Under PSYPACT?

If you hold a TAP, you may provide in-person, face-to-face services in a participating state for up to 30 calendar days per year, per state. The day count resets each calendar year and is tracked separately for each state. Beyond that limit, full licensure in that state is required.

A few practical points:

• The 30-day allowance is per participating state, so in a single year you could spend up to 30 days in each of several states, tracked independently.
• Typical uses are short and occasional: assessments, workshops, intensive programs, disaster response, or covering briefly for a colleague, rather than building a standing local caseload.
• Once you pass 30 days in a given state, you need that state's full license to keep working in person there, and the in-person time does not extend your telepsychology authority or vice versa.

Which State's Laws Apply During a PSYPACT Session?

You remain bound by the scope of practice and the laws of the state where your client is physically located at the time of service.

A treatment or assessment permitted in your home state is not automatically permitted in the client's state, and the receiving state can take adverse action against your authorization based on its own laws.

Concretely, the client's state governs several things you might otherwise handle by your home rules:

• Mandatory reporting duties, such as child or elder abuse reporting and any duty to warn or protect, follow the client's state, and the triggers and timelines differ from one state to the next.
• Informed consent, confidentiality, telehealth disclosure, and record-keeping requirements are set by the client's state.
• If the client's state restricts or prohibits a service you routinely provide, for example certain assessments or techniques, you cannot provide it there under PSYPACT.

What Does PSYPACT Not Cover?

PSYPACT is not a national license, and several common situations fall outside it:

• Non-participating states. You still need a full license to serve a client physically located in a state that has not enacted PSYPACT.
• Other professions. Counselors, clinical social workers, and marriage and family therapists are not covered; each has its own separate compact.
• Permanent in-person practice. PSYPACT covers telepsychology and temporary, time-limited in-person work, not a permanent office or an ongoing local caseload in another state.
• Insurance and payer credentialing. PSYPACT grants the authority to practice, but health plans and telehealth platforms may still require you to be credentialed and in-network in the client's state, so confirm billing and reimbursement separately.

It also does not remove state accountability or override each state's own rules on prescribing, supervision, or specialty practice.

How Does PSYPACT Compare to Other Behavioral Health Compacts?

PSYPACT is one of three interstate compacts for behavioral health, and confusion between them is common. Each covers a different profession.

If you are a counselor, clinical social worker, or marriage and family therapist, PSYPACT does not apply to you, and you should look to the compact for your own profession.

The three compacts do not overlap or cross-recognize. Holding PSYPACT authorization does nothing for a counseling or social work license, and vice versa. Each compact runs its own credentialing system and its own list of participating states, and those lists do not always match, so a state in PSYPACT is not necessarily in the Counseling Compact or the Social Work Licensure Compact.

How Does PSYPACT Fit Into Cross-State Mental Health Care?

PSYPACT solved a real problem for psychologists and their clients: continuity of care when people move, travel, attend college out of state, or split time between two homes.

A psychologist with an active APIT can keep treating a client who relocates from Texas to Florida, as long as both states participate. Common real-world situations include:

• College students who keep seeing their home-state psychologist while living on an out-of-state campus.
• Clients who split the year between two homes, such as snowbirds moving south for the winter.
• Military families who relocate between participating states but want to keep the same provider.
• People in rural or underserved areas who reach a specialist practicing in another state.

It is worth being precise about what interstate authorization does and does not reach, because some client needs are tied to the client's own state rather than to a compact. Emotional support animal documentation is one example. 

Because ESA housing protections run through the federal Fair Housing Act (42 U.S.C. § 3604) and are evaluated under the licensing law of the state where the client lives, that documentation is generally tied to a provider licensed in the client's home state rather than to interstate telepsychology authority. 

RealESALetter.com connects individuals with mental health professionals licensed in their own state to issue an online ESA letter that reflects the correct state licensure and the Fair Housing Act standard.

The distinction matters: PSYPACT governs where a psychologist may practice, while ESA and similar documentation follow the client's state of residence.

How Do You Verify a PSYPACT Provider?

Anyone can confirm whether a psychologist holds active PSYPACT authorization. The PSYPACT Commission maintains an official directory that functions as a public PSYPACT provider list, showing current APIT and TAP holders. To verify:

1. Go to the directory linked from psypact.gov.
2. Search by the psychologist's name or state.
3. Confirm the authorization type (APIT for telepsychology, TAP for in-person) and that it is active.

Clients and employers should verify authorization there rather than relying on a clinician's marketing claims, since a state appearing on a PSYPACT list does not by itself mean a specific provider is authorized. 

Authorization can also lapse at renewal or be suspended after disciplinary action, and a state that has enacted PSYPACT may not yet be effective, so the live directory reflects current status more reliably than a resume, a website, or a printed map.