The Malaysia Digital Arrival Card (MDAC) is compulsory for Indian passport holders, you file it within the three days before you arrive, and the official portal takes no payment for it (Immigration Department of Malaysia, accessed 2026-08-27). It is a declaration, not a visa, and it is required even though Indian nationals currently enter Malaysia without one.
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: The MDAC is the last form standing between you and departure, and cover is the other thing worth adding at that point: Zurich Kotak’s Smart Travel plans cover emergency medical treatment abroad, medical evacuation and repatriation, baggage loss or delay and trip cancellation for specified reasons, each up to the limits of the plan you buy, on the Asia geography Malaysia sits in. Claims run through Europ Assistance India, cashless within the overseas hospital network or on reimbursement, and a claim is settled within 15 days of complete documents. The policy is bought per trip and issued online once your dates are fixed.
Last verified: 2026-08-27.
The official portal, and only the official portal
File at imigresen-online.imi.gov.my/mdac/main , which is run by Jabatan Imigresen Malaysia, the Immigration Department.
Type the address rather than following a search advert. Malaysia has an active problem with lookalike MDAC sites: the Immigration Department has named a fraudulent domain publicly, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs carries a mission notice headed “BE CAUTIOUS OF MALAYSIA DIGITAL ARRIVAL CARD (MDAC) WEBSITES THAT DO NOT REPRESENT US. ALWAYS USE THE OFFICIAL WEBSITE TO AVOID SCAMS.”
The portal carries three self-service tools: Registration, Check Registration, and Check Egate Eligibility Status.
The three-day window, both ends of it
The window opens two days before your arrival date and closes on the arrival date itself. The form counts the day you submit as one of the three.
The Department’s own infographic instructs travellers to “Complete and submit MDAC within 3 days before arrival in Malaysia”, and the registration form enforces it with a validation notice reading “Please note that your trip must be within 3 days (including the date of submission)”. The High Commission of Malaysia in New Delhi states the same rule: “Compulsory online submission of the Malaysia Digital Arrival Card (MDAC) three (3) days before the arrival date” (High Commission of Malaysia, New Delhi, accessed 2026-08-27).
If you arrive on | You can file from | You must file by |
2026-09-15 | 2026-09-13 | 2026-09-15, before you reach the counter |
2026-12-01 | 2026-11-29 | 2026-12-01, before you reach the counter |
Filing too early is the single most common failure with this form, and it catches organised travellers rather than disorganised ones. Book in September for a November trip, open the MDAC the same evening, and the form will not take it, because the travel date sits outside the three-day window. File on the day the window opens and you are done with two days to spare.
Indians do not need a visa until 2026-12-31, and four conditions come with it
Malaysia’s visa waiver for Indian nationals runs to 31 December 2026, for stays of up to 30 days. The High Commission of Malaysia in New Delhi, on a page whose footer read “Last Updated: 27 August, 2026” when we checked it:
The Malaysian government has announced the extension of visa waiver for Indian nationals travelling to Malaysia until 31 December 2026, for up to 30 days, for business, tourism, social or transit purposes.
The Immigration Department’s own visa-requirement table says the same thing more tersely: India sits on the visa-required list with the footnote “India** citizen: visa exempts until 31st December 2026” (Immigration Department of Malaysia, accessed 2026-08-27).
The waiver is not unconditional. The High Commission lists four things an Indian passport holder must be able to produce at security and immigration screening, and most pages ranking on this query carry none of them:
Condition | The High Commission’s wording |
Passport validity | “The passport validity must be at least six (6) months” |
Return travel | “Confirmed Return Flight Tickets” |
Accommodation | “Confirmed Hotel Booking; and” |
Arrival card | “Compulsory online submission of the Malaysia Digital Arrival Card (MDAC) three (3) days before the arrival date” |
Two things follow. First, a return ticket and a hotel booking are stated conditions of entry rather than helpful suggestions, and they are checked. Second, the MDAC is named inside the waiver itself, so visa-free entry and “nothing to file” are not the same thing.
The waiver covers business, tourism, social and transit purposes; travelling to work or to study needs a visa arranged before departure. And 31 December 2026 is a real date, not a formality: this waiver has been extended before and it can lapse, so if you are booking for 2027, check it again before you pay for anything. For the wider picture, see visa-free countries for Indians .
Flying to Malaysia? The MDAC is usually the last thing on the list, filed three days out, when the flights and the hotel are already paid for and mostly non-refundable. Travel insurance is the box next to it, and it takes about the same time.
This is not a visa
The MDAC is an arrival declaration. It records who you are, where you are staying and when you land, and it grants you nothing.
It does not create permission to enter, it does not extend a stay, and it is not what makes your trip visa-free. The waiver above does that, separately and on its own schedule. A traveller who files an MDAC and assumes the entry question is settled has answered the wrong question.
Who is exempt
The Immigration Department publishes exactly seven exempt categories, and Indian passport holders are not among them.
# | Exempt category, in the Department’s own wording |
1 | Citizens of Singapore |
2 | Diplomatic and official passport holders |
3 | Malaysia permanent residents and long-term pass holders |
4 | General Certificate of Identity (GCI) Brunei Darussalam holders |
5 | Brunei Malaysia Frequent Traveler Facility holders |
6 | Thailand border pass holders |
7 | Indonesia cross-border travel document (PLB) holders |
Source: the Department’s own infographic, published at imigresen-online.imi.gov.my , accessed 2026-08-27. India appears nowhere on it, and IND - INDIA is a selectable nationality on the registration form. An Indian tourist files the MDAC.
On transit, be careful what you read. A transit exemption is widely asserted elsewhere and it is not on the Department’s published list, so we will not print it as one. If you are passing through Malaysia without clearing immigration, check with your airline rather than assuming, because the safe course is to file: the MDAC costs nothing and five minutes.
Autogate: Indian travellers use the manual counter
Filing the MDAC does not give an Indian traveller access to Malaysia’s autogates. India is not on the eligible list.
The MDAC portal publishes the list in plain text on its front page, under the heading “Malaysia Autogate Facilities for Foreigners”:
Eligible for Malaysian autogates | Detail |
MACS holders | Malaysia Automated Clearance System |
Long-Term Pass holders | For the duration of the pass |
Visitors from ten countries | Australia, Brunei, Germany, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, United States, United Kingdom |
Source: MDAC portal, accessed 2026-08-27.
A good deal of the content ranking on this query implies the opposite. An Indian passport holder queues at the staffed counter, which is exactly what the Department’s own arrival infographic describes: show the MDAC registration and have the passport verified by an officer. If you think you may qualify through a pass rather than a passport, the portal’s “Check Egate Eligibility Status” tool answers it directly.
What it costs
The official portal charges nothing. The MDAC form has no payment step and no fee field.
That is a deliberately careful sentence. Singapore’s and India’s immigration authorities both say in plain words that their arrival cards are free; Malaysia’s Immigration Department does not appear to publish an equivalent statement, so we are not going to put one in its mouth. What it does publish is a warning about sites that charge. Reporting the Department’s statement on a fraudulent MDAC site in January 2025, Malaysia’s national news agency quoted it directing travellers to the official portal:
Always visit the official MDAC website at https://imigresen-online.imi.gov.my/mdac/main to avoid scams and safeguard your personal information.
Source: Bernama, 2025-01-04.
So: any site asking you for money to file an MDAC is a third party selling you a form you can complete yourself, not the Immigration Department collecting a fee.
How to file the MDAC
Have four things in front of you and it takes a few minutes: your passport, for the number, exact name spelling and expiry date; your arrival and departure dates; the address of your accommodation in Malaysia, as the booking prints it; and an email address you can open on the trip.
Then:
1. Go to imigresen-online.imi.gov.my/mdac/main and choose Registration, typing the address rather than following an advert.
2. Enter your passport number and nationality, selecting IND - INDIA.
3. Enter your name and personal details exactly as the passport prints them.
4. Enter your travel dates, which must fall inside the three-day window.
5. Enter your accommodation address, including state, city and postcode.
6. Enter and confirm your email address, then submit.
7. Keep the confirmation, as a screenshot and on paper, and use Check Registration later if you need to look it up.
Fill the form in one sitting per traveller. Everyone in the party who holds their own passport needs their own MDAC, children included.
Common rejection and error causes
The Immigration Department does not publish a list of rejection reasons, so this table is drawn from the rules it does publish rather than from an official error list. It is the honest version, and it covers what actually goes wrong.
What goes wrong | Why | How to avoid it |
Submitting outside the three-day window | The form validates the travel date against the submission date | File on the day the window opens, two days before arrival |
Name or passport number not matching the passport | The record is checked against the document at the counter | Copy from the passport, not from memory |
A typo in the email address | The form asks you to confirm it, and the confirmation goes there | Re-read it before submitting |
Using a lookalike domain | Money paid, and personal data handed to a stranger | imigresen-online.imi.gov.my , typed directly |
One filing for a whole family | Travellers arriving with no declaration | One per person who holds a passport |
Assuming visa-free means nothing to file | The waiver and the MDAC are separate obligations | The MDAC applies regardless |
If your trip takes in more than one country
Each country’s arrival card is a separate filing, with its own window and its own portal. A Kuala Lumpur and Singapore itinerary needs two: see Singapore Arrival Card for the Singapore rules, which differ. For the region as a whole, which countries require a digital arrival card sets out each regime, its window and its cost in one table.
Travel insurance and the pre-departure list
The MDAC does not ask for proof of travel insurance, and it is not among the four conditions Malaysia attaches to the visa waiver. Nobody is going to stop you at the counter for not having a policy.
It belongs here for a different reason. Two of those four conditions, the confirmed return ticket and the confirmed hotel booking, mean an Indian traveller to Malaysia has necessarily paid for both before departure. That is money already committed and mostly non-refundable by the time you sit down to file the arrival card, which is what a travel policy exists to protect.
Zurich Kotak’s Smart Travel plans cover Malaysia 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, maximum entry age 70. There is no Senior Citizen plan on the Asia geography, so a traveller aged 71 or over needs a different route. Baggage, trip delay, trip cancellation, passport loss, personal accident and medical evacuation are covered up to plan limits. To put cover in place before you file the card, start at travel insurance .
Frequently asked questions
Is the MDAC compulsory for Indian travellers? Yes. The Immigration Department of Malaysia publishes seven exempt categories and India is not among them, so every Indian passport holder must file a Malaysia Digital Arrival Card before arriving. The visa waiver does not remove the obligation; the High Commission calls the MDAC compulsory in the same paragraph as the waiver.
Is the MDAC free? The official portal takes no payment. The MDAC form has no fee field and no payment step, and the Immigration Department has publicly warned travellers about lookalike sites, directing them to the official portal to avoid scams. Any site charging you to file an MDAC is a third party, not the Immigration Department.
How early can I submit the MDAC? Within three days of arrival, and the day you submit counts as one of the three. In practice the window opens two days before your arrival date. The registration form checks the travel date against the submission date and will not accept a trip that falls outside it, which is why filing weeks in advance does not work.
Do Indians need a visa for Malaysia? Not for a short visit until 31 December 2026. Malaysia has extended its visa waiver for Indian nationals to that date, for stays of up to 30 days, for business, tourism, social or transit purposes. Four conditions apply: a passport valid for at least six months, confirmed return flight tickets, a confirmed hotel booking, and a submitted MDAC. Travelling to work or study still needs a visa.
Does the MDAC let me use Malaysia’s autogates? No. Malaysia publishes its autogate eligibility list on the MDAC portal, and India is not on it. The list covers MACS holders, long-term pass holders and visitors from Australia, Brunei, Germany, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, the United States and the United Kingdom. An Indian passport holder uses the staffed immigration counter.
Is the MDAC a visa? No. It is an arrival declaration that records who you are, where you are staying and when you land. It grants no permission to enter. Entry for Indian nationals currently rests on the visa waiver, which is a separate thing with its own end date.
