# Malaysia Visa for Indians: the 30-Day Waiver and the MDAC

> The 30-day waiver for Indians runs through 31 December 2026. The MDAC arrival card is free at imigresen-online.imi.gov.my, filed 3 days before landing.

- Published: 2026-08-01 · Updated: 2026-08-10
- Author: VisaGyan (VisaGyan)
- Canonical: https://visagyan.in/malaysia-visa-for-indians
- Official sources:
  - https://www.kln.gov.my/web/ind_new-delhi/requirement_foreigner
  - https://imigresen-online.imi.gov.my/mdac/main
  - https://www.imi.gov.my/index.php/en/main-services/visa/visa-requirement-by-country/
  - https://malaysiavisa.imi.gov.my/

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## What Indians actually need in 2026, dated

**Indian passport holders do not need a visa to enter Malaysia for a tourist, business, social or transit visit of up to 30 days — a waiver that currently runs through 31 December 2026 — but every traveller must still file the Malaysia Digital Arrival Card (MDAC) online before flying.** Malaysia's High Commission in New Delhi states it plainly: an extension "for Indian nationals travelling to Malaysia until 31 December 2026, for up to 30 days, for business, tourism, social or transit purposes" (kln.gov.my). The visa requirement is gone. The paperwork is not. The same page lists passport validity of at least six months, a confirmed return flight ticket, a confirmed hotel booking, and "compulsory online submission of the Malaysia Digital Arrival Card (MDAC) three (3) days before the arrival date" as conditions of the waiver, not optional extras. The Malaysia visa fee for Indians, in rupees, is ₹0 — there is no government charge for either the waiver or the MDAC.

That distinction — a waiver with conditions attached, not "visa-free" in the loose sense most pages use it — is where this guide differs from what already ranks for this query. Search results for "malaysia visa for indians" surface airline pages, OTA visa pages, insurer blogs and Google's own AI Overview, several of which compress "no visa needed" into "nothing to do before you fly." Malaysia's own government pages say otherwise: the MDAC is compulsory, and immigration officers can still ask questions at the counter regardless of waiver status. The rest of this guide works through the waiver's actual expiry, the MDAC itself, who is reselling a free form, and what changes if your trip runs past 30 days.

## The waiver's expiry, and how long it has actually run

**The current entry waiver for Indians is dated, not permanent — it runs through 31 December 2026, and no announcement extending it further had been published as of this guide's verification date.** If your trip falls after that date, re-check kln.gov.my or imi.gov.my directly before you rely on this page. A waiver with a stated end date that has lapsed is a materially different situation from one still running. Nothing here substitutes for checking again on the day you book.

The scheme did not start at its current length. An earlier version of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' "Visa-Free Travel to Malaysia for Indian Citizens" page stated the original terms: "The Republic of India passport holders travelling to Malaysia from 1 December 2023 until 31 December 2024 are eligible for visa-free entry into Malaysia" (kln.gov.my). The High Commission of Malaysia in New Delhi's current page describes what happened next as an extension of that same scheme, carried forward to 31 December 2026, for the same 30-day, four-purpose scope (business, tourism, social, transit). How many separate renewal announcements sit between the original December 2024 end date and the current December 2026 one is not confirmed by the sources gathered for this guide. Treat the exact count of extensions as unconfirmed, and treat the current end date — 31 December 2026 — as the only figure worth acting on.

Two further, independently maintained Malaysian government pages agree on that same end date. The Immigration Department's country-requirement page states "India\*\* citizen: visa exempts until 31st December 2026" (imi.gov.my), and the MYVISA eVisa portal states the exemption runs "effective from 1 December 2023 until 31 December 2026" (malaysiavisa.imi.gov.my). Three separately maintained government domains agreeing on the same date is a stronger basis for the figure on this page than any single travel-agent blog repeating it. It is also why a page still citing "31 December 2024" as the waiver's end date — a figure several older aggregator posts never updated — is describing a scheme that already expired once, was renewed, and no longer applies.

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## The Malaysia Digital Arrival Card (MDAC): what it is and who must file it

**The MDAC is a mandatory, free, online pre-arrival declaration — every Indian traveller using the waiver files it at imigresen-online.imi.gov.my/mdac/main within three days of arrival, the same portal the High Commission of Malaysia names on its own visa page.** It is not a visa and it is not a fee-based product. It collects passport details, travel dates and flight information, and your Malaysian accommodation address, and Malaysia's Immigration Department (Jabatan Imigresen Malaysia) processes it directly through that domain, not through any intermediary.

The High Commission of Malaysia in New Delhi lists the MDAC alongside the waiver's other three conditions — six-month passport validity, a confirmed return ticket, and a confirmed hotel booking — in the same paragraph. It is written into the waiver's own terms, not a separate, skippable step.

The portal itself, fetched directly for this guide, states a customs condition that most competitor summaries of the MDAC leave out entirely: travellers carrying cash or bearer negotiable instruments "more than USD 10,000 equivalent must declare to customs." Travellers may also not carry Malaysian Ringgit worth more than USD 10,000 equivalent into the country "without permission from Bank Negara Malaysia," the country's central bank. That is a customs rule, separate from the MDAC's own required fields, stated on the same government portal you use to file it — not a figure repeated from a travel blog.

## How to file the MDAC, step by step

1. **Go to imigresen-online.imi.gov.my/mdac/main directly.** Not a copy of it, not a page that redirects through a travel agent's branding first — the address bar should read that domain when you submit.
2. **Enter your passport details exactly as printed** — full name, passport number, nationality, date of birth. A single mistyped character is the most commonly cited reason a submission needs correcting, across the reseller sites that process these forms daily.
3. **Enter your travel dates and flight details**, matched to your actual booking, and your intended port of entry into Malaysia.
4. **Enter your Malaysia accommodation address** — hotel name and address, or your host's address if you are staying with someone.
5. **Enter a working email address and phone number.** Your MDAC confirmation is sent to that email; you will want to open it before you land, not after.
6. **Submit. There is no payment step** — if a form asks you to pay for a "MDAC" or "arrival card" submission, you are not on Malaysia's own portal.
7. **Save the confirmation.** A screenshot or a printed copy removes any doubt if you are asked for it at the counter.

Timing is the one rule with no flexibility. The MDAC sits behind a three-day window and will not accept a submission earlier than that, so file it once your outbound flight and hotel booking are both locked in — not the moment you buy your ticket, and not from the departure lounge in Mumbai or Delhi if it can be avoided.

## The official MDAC portal, and the resellers that outrank it

**The only official channel for the MDAC is imigresen-online.imi.gov.my/mdac/main, run directly by Malaysia's Immigration Department — no other domain files it on the government's behalf, and the government charges nothing for it.** Search results for "malaysia visa for indians" nonetheless surface a long list of travel agents, visa-processing sites and OTA pages ahead of or alongside Malaysia's own pages: goindigo.in, airindia.com, visahq.in, akbartravels.com, atlys.com and iVisa's Malaysia pages all rank for the query, and several of them sell an MDAC "application" service.

Two dated checkout captures made for this guide, in late July 2026, show what that service looks like at the point of payment. One reseller's Malaysia Digital Arrival Card listing was priced "starting from $64.99" and carried visa-style terms attached to it: a stated validity period and entry count that do not describe what an MDAC actually is — a free, single-use arrival declaration, not a multi-month, multi-entry travel document. A second reseller's MDAC checkout itemized a "$1 government fee" and a separate "$5 processing fee," six dollars total, for a form whose actual government fee is zero. Government fee: ₹0 / $0. Anything charged beyond that is a service fee for a form you can file yourself, directly, at no cost.

That is not proof any specific site is acting in bad faith. Some resellers do disclose, lower on the page, that the charge is for assistance rather than for the form itself. Even one of the same reseller pages reviewed for this guide states in its own FAQ that "the official MDAC is completely free if you fill it on the government website. Only third-party websites may charge service fees, which is optional" — a competitor's own words, confirming the pattern this section describes. The signal worth watching for is a checkout screen that does not clearly separate a $0 government line from whatever the site is charging you, or a page that never names imigresen-online.imi.gov.my at all. Both Malaysian government touchpoints in this process share the same domain ending: .imi.gov.my for the Immigration Department and its MDAC and eVisa portals, .kln.gov.my for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and its High Commissions abroad. If a page asking you to pay is on neither, you are paying for a copy of a form that costs nothing on the original.

## What immigration checks beyond the MDAC

**An MDAC confirmation and a valid waiver get you to the counter; officers can still ask for a return ticket, hotel booking and evidence you can pay for your stay, and Malaysia sets a firm cash-declaration threshold separate from all of that.** These are the entry conditions actually named on Malaysia's own pages, not the generic "documents required" checklist most competitor pages recycle:

| Requirement | What Malaysia's own pages say | Source |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Passport validity | At least 6 months from arrival | kln.gov.my |
| Return/onward ticket | Confirmed return flight tickets | kln.gov.my |
| Accommodation | Confirmed hotel booking | kln.gov.my |
| MDAC | Compulsory, filed online 3 days before arrival | kln.gov.my; imigresen-online.imi.gov.my/mdac/main |
| Cash declaration | Cash or bearer instruments over USD 10,000 equivalent must be declared to customs | imigresen-online.imi.gov.my/mdac/main |
| Minimum funds figure | Not published | — |

No fixed minimum bank-balance figure is published on kln.gov.my or the MDAC portal for the tourist waiver. Unlike the cash-declaration threshold above, which is a specific, dated figure, "proof you can afford your trip" is not attached to a stated rupee or ringgit number anywhere in the sources gathered for this guide. Some travel-agency pages suggest an informal rule of thumb around USD 50 per day of stay; that is the agency's own estimate, not a government figure, and it should be treated as a planning guideline rather than a number you will be tested against at the counter.

One community account matches the absence of a published funds check. An applicant who flew to Malaysia after the waiver began described the arrivals process directly: "No, just return tickets and hotel details. The process took less than 5 minutes... I'm not sure if they do ask anyone about the funds, so I can't say what is the right amount" (one applicant, r/india\_tourism, 22 August 2024). That single account does not establish a rule; it is one traveller's experience at one airport, on one day. It does line up with the absence of any published funds figure — nobody is checking against a number that does not exist.

One further detail Malaysia's own MDAC portal states but no competitor summary mentions: the list of nationalities eligible for automated e-Gate entry names Australia, Brunei, Germany, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, the United States and the United Kingdom. India is not on it. An Indian traveller, MDAC filed or not, goes through a staffed immigration counter, not the automated gate, regardless of how smoothly the online paperwork went.

## What happens if you land without a filed MDAC

**The sources gathered for this guide do not include an official Malaysian government statement describing what immigration does if a traveller lands without a completed MDAC — Malaysia's own pages state the requirement, not the consequence of missing it.** What is reported, consistently, across the reseller and travel-agent sites that process MDAC submissions daily, is that a traveller without one is asked to complete it on a phone or airport kiosk before clearing the counter, which costs time rather than blocking entry outright. Treat that as reported practice from sites with a commercial interest in the answer, not confirmed government policy. The honest position is that Malaysia's official channels do not publish an enforcement consequence for this guide to cite.

What is confirmed, directly, is the filing window itself, and it is the more common failure mode in practice: the MDAC must be submitted "three (3) days before the arrival date" (kln.gov.my), and the portal will not accept a submission outside that window. File too early and it is simply not yet open. File too late and you are completing it from the airport instead of from home. For most Indian travellers, the practical rule is to file once the outbound flight and hotel booking are both confirmed — that is usually well inside the three-day window on its own, without needing to watch a calendar for the exact moment it opens.

## If you're staying past 30 days, or don't qualify for the waiver

**A stay longer than 30 days, or a purpose the waiver does not cover — work, study, a long-term business placement — needs an actual visa, applied for through Malaysia's eVisa portal at malaysiavisa.imi.gov.my before you travel.** The waiver does not extend itself, and there is no walk-up counter for a longer-stay visa at a Malaysian airport. Malaysia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs page for Indian passport holders links directly to that eVisa portal and its FAQ for anyone who needs a visa rather than the waiver.

A now-outdated route still circulates on some travel sites: eNTRI (Electronic Travel Registration and Information), a 15-day electronic registration Indian and Chinese passport holders used before the current waiver took effect. Several pages still describe eNTRI as the active process — one, dated July 2024, states "Indian citizens can get a Malaysia ENTRI Visa for a maximum of 15 days." That describes the pre-December-2023 system. Since the waiver already grants 30 days without any advance application at all, a page steering an Indian traveller toward an eNTRI registration in 2026 is describing a scheme the current waiver has already made unnecessary for a standard tourist trip.

A visa on arrival is reported, by resellers rather than by Malaysia's own pages in the sources gathered here, for travellers arriving from Singapore, Thailand or Indonesia while already holding a valid visa for one of those countries. That is a narrow, transit-adjacent case, not the standard route for a direct flight from India. If your itinerary depends on it, verify against imi.gov.my directly before relying on any third-party description of it, including this one.

## Malaysia against its SE-Asia neighbours: who else runs a free arrival card

**Malaysia's MDAC is free. Not every neighbouring destination's equivalent form is — Vietnam's e-visa charges a government fee where Malaysia's and Thailand's arrival declarations, and Sri Lanka's tourist ETA, currently do not.**

| Destination | Entry status for Indians | Mandatory pre-arrival form | Government fee for the form |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Malaysia | 30-day waiver, through 31 Dec 2026 | MDAC — imigresen-online.imi.gov.my/mdac/main | Free |
| Thailand | 60-day visa exemption (cabinet approved a cut to 30 days on 14 Jul 2026; still pending Royal Gazette publication, not yet in force as of this guide's verification date) | TDAC — tdac.immigration.go.th | Free |
| Sri Lanka | ETA required for entry | ETA — eta.gov.lk | Free since 25 May 2026 |
| Vietnam | E-visa required for entry | E-visa — evisa.gov.vn | $25-50 |

A Malaysia visa for Indians, in the sense most travellers mean the phrase, is really two separate objects: the waiver itself, and the free form that rides along with it. Malaysia and Thailand sit in the same category — no visa, a mandatory free declaration, and, per this guide's own findings above, a reseller layer charging for that free form regardless. [Sri Lanka moved into the same free-form category only in May 2026](/sri-lanka-visa-for-indians); before that its ETA carried a real fee. Vietnam is the outlier on this list specifically because its e-visa is a genuine visa, not a declaration, and its government fee reflects that difference. If a trip covers more than one of these countries, budget the MDAC and the TDAC as free, and the [Vietnam e-visa](/vietnam-evisa-for-indians) as a real, dollar-denominated line item. Check [what else has changed across Indian-outbound visa rules this year](/visa-rule-changes-2026) before you finalise dates, since more than one of these schemes has moved on short notice.

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Planning a wider Southeast Asia route rather than a single stop makes the fee-versus-paperwork distinction above matter more, not less. It plays out differently again on the [Thailand visa page](/thailand-visa-for-indians) and the [Indonesia visa page](/indonesia-visa-for-indians), and if you are weighing whether to pay someone else to handle any of this instead of filing it yourself, that trade-off is covered directly on [should you hire a visa agent in India](/should-i-hire-a-visa-agent-india). That is the full shape of a Malaysia visa for Indians right now: a free 30-day waiver, a free mandatory form, and a resale market layered on top of both.

*VisaGyan is not affiliated with the Malaysian government, the Immigration Department of Malaysia (Jabatan Imigresen Malaysia), or any visa-processing service named on this page; we book nothing and sell nothing.*

*Waiver status, dates and the MDAC requirement verified on 1 August 2026 directly against the High Commission of Malaysia, New Delhi (kln.gov.my) and Malaysia's own MDAC portal (imigresen-online.imi.gov.my/mdac/main); cross-checked against imi.gov.my's country-requirement page and the malaysiavisa.imi.gov.my eVisa portal via their own indexed content. Reseller checkout observations dated 31 July 2026.*

*Sources cited only — expert review pending. For individualized advice, consult a licensed professional.*