Update MDAC After Submission: Fix Your Malaysia Arrival Card

The short answer

You cannot edit a submitted Malaysia Digital Arrival Card (MDAC). The portal has no update function, and nobody can go into a finished registration and change the flight number or hotel name. The fix is to submit a new card with the corrected details: the newest registration is the one that counts, and it replaces the earlier one. The whole process is free on the official portal, imigresen-online.imi.gov.my, and takes about five minutes.

That answer surprises people who know the Thai system, where the TDAC portal has a dedicated update flow. Malaysia does not. What the MDAC portal offers instead is a menu of four functions: Registration, which creates a new card, Check Registration, which shows the status of one on record, Check Visit Pass, and an e-gate eligibility check. Corrections work through the first one, used twice. If you would rather not handle the redo yourself, we are an independent application service: we correct and refile for our customers free, and file new cards for $15 with confirmation within 24 hours.

What you can and cannot do after submitting

Once the portal accepts your registration, three things are true. One: your details are on record as submitted, and nothing about them can be changed in place. Two: you can still view and verify the record, using Check Registration with your passport number, nationality, and the PIN from your confirmation email. Three: you can submit again, because nothing prevents a second registration for the same passport inside the window.

What you cannot do is reopen the form, cancel a submission, or merge two cards. If your first card has a typo and your second card is correct, the system does not charge you, does not reject the second submission, and does not punish the overlap. Immigration matches the newest record. Keep both confirmation emails until you have landed, in case an officer asks about the earlier one.

One edge matters: resubmission only works inside the submission window, within 3 days before your arrival date. Arriving 12 August 2026 means the window is 8 to 11 August, and a refile on any of those days is fine. If you discover a mistake after the window has closed, you cannot refile; see the section on arriving with an error further down.

Check what is live before you refile

Before submitting a correction, check the existing record, because sometimes the mistake is only in the confirmation email you read, not in the registration itself. Open the portal, choose Check Registration, and enter your passport number, your nationality, and the PIN from the confirmation email. The system returns your registration status as recorded.

This one-minute step prevents the classic double error: refiling to fix a typo that was never filed, and introducing a real one in the process. After refiling, run Check Registration again with the new PIN from the new confirmation email, and confirm the corrected card is the live record. The full screen-by-screen walkthrough, including the status check, is in how to apply for the MDAC.

How to update your MDAC in four steps

The correction route, in order:

The resubmission route

• Open imigresen-online.imi.gov.my and choose Registration to start a new card.
• Re-enter every block with the corrected details, copying the passport block character for character from the biodata page.
• Submit, and save the new confirmation email with its new PIN. The old card stops being the live record; the new one takes over.
• Run Check Registration with the new PIN to verify the corrected card is the one on record before you fly.

Worked scenarios: what to fix and how

Not every mistake needs the same response. These are the cases we see most, and what each one calls for:

If the window has already closed

The portal only accepts submissions within 3 days before arrival, and that rule applies to corrections too. If you land tomorrow and notice a wrong passport digit tonight, the day before arrival is still inside the window in most cases, so refile at once. If the window has fully closed, you cannot submit anything more.

In that situation, go to a manned counter rather than the e-gate, hand over your passport, and explain the error before the officer finds it. Errors in flight numbers and hotels are routinely absorbed at the counter. Errors in the passport block cause the delay, because the officer has to process you manually while the queue builds behind you. The safe habit that prevents all of this: read the confirmation email against your passport within an hour of submitting, when the window is still wide open. What each field should contain is listed in our MDAC requirements guide.

Corrections through our service

If we filed your card, send us the correction and we refile it, free, inside the window, and re-verify the new record against your passport before it goes in. That aftercare is the working argument for a filing service on the update question: the portal gives you no edit button and no error prompt, so every mistake is found by a human or not found at all. We are that human for our customers.

The wider system picture, including the PIN mechanics and the single-entry rule, is in the complete MDAC guide. Want us to file or fix it? Start your application. Either way, the correction itself is always free to do yourself on the official portal.

Frequently Asked Questions