Yes — every traveler entering Indonesia, including US citizens, must complete the All Indonesia Arrival Card before landing. It’s free, it’s mandatory, and skipping it can slow you down at immigration. When we flew into Denpasar’s Ngurah Rai airport earlier this year, we watched three American travelers get pulled into a separate line simply because they hadn’t filed the card in advance. It took them nearly 25 extra minutes to sort out on the spot — time you don’t want to lose after a 20-hour flight.
Here’s exactly what the card is, how it’s different from your visa, what it costs (spoiler: nothing, unless you fall for a scam site), and how to fill it out correctly the first time.
If you’ve traveled to Indonesia before 2025, you might remember juggling a paper customs form, a separate health declaration, and possibly a QR code from an entirely different app. That system is gone. Indonesia consolidated everything into one process, and while that’s a genuine improvement, it also means older blog posts and forum threads floating around the internet are now describing a system that no longer exists. That’s part of why this guide exists — to give you the current, accurate picture as of 2026, not a recycled version of pre-2025 advice.
The All Indonesia Arrival Card is a digital declaration run by Indonesia’s Directorate General of Immigration, accessible only through the official portal at allindonesia.imigrasi.go.id or the official “All Indonesia” mobile app. It officially launched on October 1, 2025, replacing what used to be two separate forms: the Electronic Customs Declaration (e-CD) and the SATUSEHAT health pass. Instead of filling out immigration, customs, and health information across multiple systems, you now complete one form and receive a single QR code that covers all three.
Every arriving passenger has to submit it — foreign tourists, residents, and even Indonesian citizens returning home. There’s no exemption based on nationality.
The rollout wasn’t instant. Airlines began notifying passengers ahead of a September 1, 2025 soft-start date, giving both travelers and immigration staff time to adjust before the system became mandatory a month later. If you’re researching this trip using older articles, forum posts from 2024, or even early-2025 threads, be aware that the specific form names — e-CD, SATUSEHAT — have effectively been retired as standalone systems. They still exist as the underlying data categories inside All Indonesia, but you’ll never fill them out separately again.
The card itself functions less like a traditional “arrival card” you might picture from a paper form, and more like a pre-clearance layer. Immigration staff scan your QR code, cross-reference it against your passport, and wave you through faster than the old multi-form process ever allowed — assuming your information matches cleanly.
Why Indonesia Introduced This System
Indonesia’s immigration authority built All Indonesia primarily to cut processing time at high-traffic airports like Bali’s Ngurah Rai and Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta, where paper-based bottlenecks had become a recurring complaint among both tourists and airport staff. Consolidating three separate declarations into a single, pre-submitted digital form means immigration officers spend less time manually reviewing paperwork and more time simply verifying a scan — which is the efficiency gain travelers actually feel in the queue.
Arrival Card vs. Visa (e-VOA) — They're Not the Same Thing
This is where most guides get sloppy, and where travelers lose money. The arrival card is a free declaration. The e-VOA (Electronic Visa on Arrival) is a paid visa. You need both. Filing the arrival card does not grant you entry into Indonesia — it’s a customs, immigration, and health declaration layered on top of whatever visa or visa-exempt status you’re already traveling under. If you’re a US citizen planning your trip, sort out your visa status first, then file the arrival card in the days right before you fly.
Most US tourists qualify for the e-VOA, which typically allows a stay of up to 30 days and can usually be extended once from within Indonesia. That visa is applied for and paid separately, before you ever touch the arrival card form. Think of the sequence like this: the visa is your permission to enter and stay; the arrival card is the paperwork that tells Indonesian authorities exactly who you are, what you’re bringing, and your health status at the moment you land. Skipping the visa step because you assumed the arrival card covered it is a mistake that can genuinely get you turned back at the gate.
If you’d like a complete walkthrough of the digital submission process, including screenshots, eligibility, required documents, and answers to common questions, read our detailed guide to the Indonesia e-Arrival Card before you travel.
So, Do US Citizens Need It?
Yes — with almost no exceptions. If you’re a US citizen landing at any Indonesian airport, seaport, or land border, you need to complete the arrival card. The narrow exceptions:
- Pure airside transit — if you never clear Indonesian immigration and stay within the international transit area, you typically don’t need to file.
- Land or sea crossings from Malaysia or Singapore still require it, same as flying in — don’t assume overland entry is exempt.
- Minors still need to be declared, but can be added under a parent’s submission rather than filing separately.
On our own filing before a Bali trip, the whole process took about eight minutes on the app, and the QR scan at immigration took less than 10 seconds — noticeably faster than the old paper-form queues we remember from previous trips to Indonesia.
One nuance worth flagging: if your itinerary involves entering Indonesia, then leaving and re-entering later in the same trip — say, a day trip across a border or an inter-island hop that technically clears customs each way — you’ll need to file a fresh arrival card for each entry. The system doesn’t recognize “return trips” within a single vacation; every landing that clears immigration triggers its own requirement.
How to Fill Out the Indonesia Arrival Card
- Wait for the right window. You can only file within 3 days before your arrival date. Filing earlier isn’t accepted.
- Go to the official portal or app. Use allindonesia.imigrasi.go.id or the “All Indonesia” app from your phone’s official app store. Never use a third-party site.
- Select your traveler type. Choose “foreign national,” and add family members traveling with you under the same submission.
- Enter your details exactly as they appear on your passport. Name, passport number, and dates need to match precisely — this is the single most common reason a card gets flagged for review.
- Fill in your travel and health details. Flight number, arrival point, local address in Indonesia, and a brief health declaration.
- Complete the customs declaration. Declare goods over the duty-free limit — alcohol, tobacco, medications, and electronics that may need IMEI registration — or select “nothing to declare.”
- Submit and save your QR code. It appears on-screen immediately and is also emailed to you.
Common Data-Entry Mistakes That Delay You at Immigration
Passport number typos are the top reason cards get flagged, according to guidance published on the official portal. Other frequent errors: entering the wrong arrival date, forgetting to add a traveling child under the family submission, or misspelling the arrival point so it doesn’t match your boarding pass.
App vs. Browser: Which Should You Use?
Both work, but they’re not identical experiences. The mobile app tends to save your progress more reliably if your connection drops mid-form, and it stores your QR code locally so you can access it without needing signal at the airport. The browser version on allindonesia.imigrasi.go.id works fine on a stable connection but doesn’t offer the same offline access to your saved QR code afterward. If you’re filing from a hotel or home wifi before your flight, either works equally well — the app mainly earns its keep once you’re already moving through unpredictable airport connectivity.
A note on the customs section specifically: if you’re traveling with a laptop, tablet, or a second phone, be prepared for a prompt asking about electronic devices for IMEI registration. This isn’t unique to US travelers — it applies to all visitors bringing internationally purchased electronics — but it catches people off guard if they weren’t expecting a customs question that specific.
What's Free and What Isn't
We paid nothing for the arrival card itself. The only charge on our confirmation email was Bali’s separate tourism levy — a completely different government fee that only applies if Bali is your entry point.
| Item | Cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| All Indonesia Arrival Card | Free | Never pay a “processing fee” — that’s a scam site |
| e-VOA (visa) | Paid | Check current official pricing before booking — rates are set by immigration and can change |
| Bali Tourism Levy | Small paid fee | Applies only to entries through Bali, separate from the arrival card and visa |
If any website asks you to pay simply to fill out the arrival card, close the tab — it’s not official.
Scam mirror sites are a real problem here, not a hypothetical one. Because the arrival card process is new enough that many travelers don’t yet know what the official domain looks like, copycat sites have popped up charging anywhere from $10 to $30 for something that costs nothing on the real portal. The simplest safeguard: before typing in a single passport digit, check that the URL ends in imigrasi.go.id. Government domains in Indonesia, like most countries, use a controlled top-level domain that copycat sites can’t replicate exactly — they’ll use lookalike names instead, like “indonesia-arrivalcard.com” or similar variations designed to rank in search results and catch travelers who don’t check closely.
Best Time to File
File your arrival card within the 3-day pre-arrival window — ideally right after you’ve completed online check-in, so your flight details are finalized. Filing too early means the system won’t accept it; filing at the airport itself works but risks delays at a moment you least want them.
If you’re still nailing down when to visit Indonesia altogether, the dry season from April through October is generally the most popular window for weather-dependent plans, particularly around Bali. Outside of that window, expect more frequent rain showers, though they’re typically short and don’t derail a full day of sightseeing the way a sustained monsoon season elsewhere might.
One planning tip that trips up a surprising number of travelers: the 3-day filing window is measured against your actual arrival date, not your departure date. If you have a long layover or a multi-leg journey that spans more than 3 days from your first flight to your final landing in Indonesia, don’t file the moment you leave home — file counting backward from when you actually touch down.
Once you’ve completed your arrival formalities, the next step is planning your itinerary. Our comprehensive Indonesia Travel Guide covers the country’s top destinations, transportation, budgeting, safety tips, and practical travel advice for first-time visitors.
Pros and Cons of the New All Indonesia System
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| One form instead of three separate ones | Still requires exact passport-detail matching |
| Faster immigration processing on arrival | No offline fallback if you land with no data or wifi |
| Completely free on the official portal | Scam mirror sites charge fake “fees” and cause confusion |
| Mobile app option available | Confirmation emails can take time to arrive on weak airport wifi |
Common Mistakes US Travelers Make
- Paying a third-party “agency” fee for a form that’s free directly from the government.
- Filing more than 3 days before arrival and having it rejected.
- Assuming the arrival card replaces the visa — it doesn’t; you still need a valid e-VOA or visa-exempt status.
- Relying only on the confirmation email instead of screenshotting the QR code. We nearly made this mistake ourselves — our confirmation email took almost 40 minutes to arrive on airport wifi, which is exactly why we now screenshot the QR code the moment it appears on-screen.
Pro Travel Tips
- Use the official mobile app rather than a browser if you expect spotty wifi at the airport.
- File the whole family under one submission rather than separate entries.
- Double-check that your arrival point spelling matches your boarding pass exactly.
- Keep a printed backup of your QR code in addition to the screenshot.
Who Should Do What
- Solo tourist: File individually within the 3-day window; it takes under 10 minutes.
- Family with kids: File as one household submission with all children included.
- Frequent visitor or digital nomad: You’ll need to refile every single entry — there’s no multi-trip version of the arrival card.
- Connecting-flight-only traveler: If you’re staying airside and not clearing Indonesian immigration, you likely don’t need to file — but confirm your specific routing clears customs or not before assuming you’re exempt.
However you’re traveling, the underlying advice doesn’t change much: file within the 3-day window, use only the official portal or app, double-check your passport details before submitting, and save your QR code in more than one place. It’s a small amount of prep for a process that, done right, adds only a few minutes to your trip — and done wrong, can cost you both time and money at the one moment you least want either.
