Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia each require Indian travellers to file a digital arrival card online in the days before landing, and Vietnam requires a pre-arrival declaration at the airports where it has been switched on. Sri Lanka has no arrival card at all, and India’s own e-Arrival Card does not apply to Indian passport holders returning home (Thai Immigration Bureau, ICA Singapore, Immigration Department of Malaysia, Immigration Department of Vietnam, Bureau of Immigration India and the Sri Lanka Department of Immigration and Emigration, all accessed 2026-08-27).
None of them is a visa. Each is a short declaration filed close to departure, and each one is separate from whatever visa or exemption lets you into the country.
This guide is maintained by Zurich Kotak General Insurance, an IRDAI-registered general insurer in India and part of the Zurich Insurance Group.
How Zurich Kotak fits in: These cards are filed country by country and a travel policy is not: one Zurich Kotak Smart Travel policy is written for the whole trip, against the dates and the destinations on it, covering emergency medical treatment abroad, medical evacuation and repatriation, baggage loss or delay and trip cancellation for specified reasons, up to the limits of the plan you buy. Geography is the thing to check, because a policy written for one region does not extend to a leg outside it, and the Asia geography covering Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia and Sri Lanka runs two tiers, Excel with sum insured up to USD 100,000 and Prime up to USD 500,000. The policy is issued online once your dates are fixed.
Last verified: 2026-08-27.
The table: what each country asks for
Six destinations, listed alphabetically, with what is required of an Indian passport holder. Every row links to a full guide for that country.
Country | What it is called | Required from an Indian traveller? | When to file | Cost | Full guide |
India | e-Arrival Card | No, not from Indian passport holders. Foreign nationals and OCI or eOCI cardholders file it | Within 72 hours before arrival | Free | |
Malaysia | Malaysia Digital Arrival Card (MDAC) | Yes, on every entry | Within 3 days before arrival, counting the day you submit | The official portal takes no payment | |
Singapore | SG Arrival Card (SGAC), with an electronic health declaration inside it | Yes | Within 3 days before arrival, counting arrival day | Free | |
Sri Lanka | No arrival card. An Electronic Travel Authorization (ETA) instead | No arrival card. The ETA itself is required before arrival | The ETA before you leave India. No filing window is published | ETA free for Indians with effect from 2026-05-25 | |
Thailand | Thailand Digital Arrival Card (TDAC) | Yes, on every entry | Within the 72 hours before arrival, counting arrival day | Free | |
Vietnam | Pre-Arrival Information (PAI), a pre-arrival declaration | Yes at the five airports where it has been switched on, under local immigration notices. The Embassy of India in Hanoi describes the wider rollout as voluntary | Before you travel. No filing window is published | No fee is published and the official portal takes no payment |
Two things the table will not tell you. The submission windows look similar and are counted differently, and Vietnam does not publish one at all, so read the country guide before you assume yours behaves like the last one. And a card is never a substitute for a visa: Singapore, Vietnam and Sri Lanka all require an Indian passport holder to hold entry permission arranged in advance, and the card sits on top of it.
Country by country, in one paragraph each
Thailand
The TDAC is mandatory for every foreign traveller entering Thailand, it is free, and it is filed within the 72 hours before arrival. It replaced the paper TM6 card and applies on every single entry, including a repeat visit a week later. Thailand’s visa position for Indian passport holders is a separate question with its own answer.
Full detail, including the filing steps and the QR code you receive: Thailand Digital Arrival Card .
Singapore
The SGAC is free, is filed within the three days before arrival counting arrival day itself, and carries the electronic health declaration inside the same submission. There is no separate health form. Indian passport holders also need a Singapore entry visa arranged before departure, which the card does not replace.
Full detail, including ICA’s own warning about paid filing services: Singapore Arrival Card .
Malaysia
The MDAC is compulsory for Indian passport holders, is filed within three days of arrival counting the submission day, and the official portal takes no payment for it. Malaysia’s visa waiver for Indian nationals runs to 31 December 2026 and names the MDAC as one of its own conditions, so visa-free entry and nothing to file are not the same thing.
Full detail, including the four waiver conditions and why Indian travellers use the staffed counter rather than the autogates: Malaysia Digital Arrival Card .
India
Indian passport holders returning home do not file the e-Arrival Card. The requirement is scoped to foreign nationals and to OCI and eOCI cardholders arriving in India, who submit it free of charge within the 72 hours before they land. An OCI card is not an exemption from it.
Full detail, including why the commencement date you will see quoted elsewhere is not printed here: India e-Arrival Card .
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka has no digital arrival card. What it has is an Electronic Travel Authorization, which is free for Indian passport holders with effect from 2026-05-25 and is still required before arrival. Free and required are both true at once, and reading the first as the second is the expensive mistake on this trip. The free ETA gives 30 days with a double-entry facility.
Full detail, including the Department’s own wording on the point: Sri Lanka ETA for Indians .
Vietnam
Vietnam’s Pre-Arrival Information declaration (PAI) runs on the Immigration Department’s own portal at prearrival.immigration.gov.vn , is filed before you travel rather than inside a published window, and has been switched on airport by airport rather than all at once. Five airports were covered by about 2026-06-22: Ho Chi Minh City, Phu Quoc, Hanoi, Da Nang and Cam Ranh. Local immigration notices require it where it is live, while the Embassy of India in Hanoi describes the wider rollout as voluntary, and not filing means slower processing at the border rather than refused entry. No fee is published for it. It does not replace the e-visa an Indian passport holder needs, and the two are checked separately.
Full detail, including which airports are covered and what to have in hand: Vietnam Arrival Card .
Planning a trip across two or three of these? The arrival cards are free and take minutes each. The flights, the hotels and the visa fees behind them are already paid for and mostly non-refundable by the time you sit down to file. International travel insurance is the box next to them on the same list.
What a digital arrival card actually is
A digital arrival card is an online version of the paper form cabin crew used to hand out before landing. It tells immigration who you are, which flight you are on and where you are staying. It grants you nothing.
The paper card was slow to process, illegible about half the time, and useless to an immigration service that wanted the data before the aircraft arrived rather than after. Moving it online lets a country pre-screen arrivals, match them against watch lists and staff its counters to the actual load. That is the whole purpose, and it explains the short filing window: data submitted two months ahead is not much use for planning next Tuesday’s shift.
A card is not a visa, and the distinction is the one that costs money to get wrong. A visa or an exemption answers whether you are allowed in. An arrival card answers who is arriving. Filing a card does not create permission to enter, does not extend a stay, and will not help you at a check-in desk in India if the visa behind it is missing. Airlines check visa status before boarding, so the failure usually happens at the departure airport rather than the arrival one.
The countries on this page split three ways on that point. Thailand’s entry route for Indian passport holders has changed more than once recently and is worth checking separately. Malaysia currently waives the visa for Indian nationals, on conditions and with an end date. Singapore, Vietnam and Sri Lanka all require permission arranged in advance. If you are choosing a destination on that basis rather than filing for one you have already chosen, the visa-free countries for Indians list is the better starting point.
What every one of them has in common
Five rules hold across all six regimes, and knowing them saves reading six pages when you only wanted to know one thing.
Rule | What it means in practice |
The official portal takes no payment | No government portal on this page has a payment step. Sites charging a fee are third parties selling you a form you can complete yourself, and several of them outrank the real portal on search |
Filed close to departure, not early | The published windows run from three days to 72 hours, and the forms reject a submission made outside them. Vietnam is the exception, publishing no window at all |
It is not a visa | None of these grants entry, extends a stay, or replaces a permission you needed before you flew |
One filing per traveller | Per person, not per family or per booking. Everyone with their own passport files their own, children and infants included |
Nothing asks about insurance | None of these filings requires proof of travel insurance, and no country here makes insurance part of the arrival-card process |
Two qualifications on the first row, because precision matters more than a tidy rule. Singapore’s ICA, India’s Bureau of Immigration and Thailand’s authority all state the filing is free in plain words. Malaysia and Vietnam do not appear to publish an equivalent statement; what is established in both cases is that the official form has no payment step, that no fee is published for it, and that Malaysia’s Immigration Department has publicly warned travellers about sites which charge. That is what the Malaysia and Vietnam pages say, and it is why this table says the portal takes no payment rather than putting a free-of-charge quote in a government’s mouth.
The most common practical failure, on the five regimes that publish a window, is filing too early, and it catches organised travellers rather than careless ones. Book in September for a November trip, open the form the same evening, and it will not take the submission. File on the day the window opens: it is done, and there is still time to correct a mistake. Vietnam, which publishes no window, is the one place on this page where filing as soon as the trip is booked is the right move.
Travel insurance and the pre-departure list
None of these arrival cards asks for proof of travel insurance, and none of these countries makes insurance part of the filing. We are not going to suggest otherwise on a page whose job is to be accurate.
It belongs here because of where you are standing when you fill one in. You are inside the last three days before departure. The flights are paid for, the hotel is booked, any visa fee is spent and non-refundable, and cover is usually the last unbought item on the list. It also takes about as long as the arrival card does.
Zurich Kotak’s Smart Travel plans cover Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam and Sri Lanka under the Asia geography, on the Excel tier with sum insured up to USD 100,000 and the Prime tier up to USD 500,000. The maximum entry age on the Asia geography is 70, and there is no Senior Citizen plan on it, so a traveller aged 71 or over needs a different route. Emergency medical treatment, medical evacuation, baggage, passport loss, trip cancellation and trip delay are covered up to plan limits, and an overseas hospital network supports cashless treatment where it is available. To put cover in place before you file, start at international travel insurance .
Frequently asked questions
Which countries require a digital arrival card from Indian travellers? Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia all require Indian travellers to file a digital arrival card before they land, and Vietnam requires a pre-arrival declaration at the airports where it has been switched on. Sri Lanka does not have one, and India’s e-Arrival Card applies to foreign nationals and OCI or eOCI cardholders rather than to Indian passport holders.
Are digital arrival cards free? No government portal on this page charges you to file one. Singapore, India and Thailand state in plain words that the filing is free. Malaysia’s official form has no payment step and its Immigration Department warns travellers about sites that charge a fee. Vietnam publishes no fee for its declaration and its official portal asks for no payment, though no Vietnamese source states in words that it is free. Any site asking you for money to file one is a third party, not the immigration authority.
Is a digital arrival card the same as a visa? No. An arrival card is a declaration of who is arriving, which flight they are on and where they are staying. A visa or an exemption is what permits you to enter. Filing an arrival card grants nothing and does not replace a visa you were meant to hold before you flew.
How early can I file a digital arrival card? Not as early as you would like. The published windows run from three days to 72 hours before arrival, they are counted differently from country to country, and the forms reject a submission made outside them. Filing on the day the window opens is the safest approach. Vietnam is the exception: it publishes no window, so file the declaration once your trip is booked.
Do Indian passport holders have to fill India’s e-Arrival Card when they fly home? No. The e-Arrival Card applies to foreign nationals and to OCI and eOCI cardholders arriving in India. An Indian passport holder returning home does not file it.
Does Sri Lanka have a digital arrival card? No. Sri Lanka has no separate digital arrival card. It has an Electronic Travel Authorization, which is free for Indian passport holders with effect from 2026-05-25 and is still required before arrival.
