Malaysia Arrival Card for Children and Babies: MDAC Rules (2026)

The short answer

Yes, children and babies need a Malaysia Digital Arrival Card (MDAC). The requirement attaches to every foreign passport holder with no minimum age, so a three-week-old on a British passport needs a card exactly like her parents do. You, the parent or guardian, complete it for her. The official form is free at imigresen-online.imi.gov.my, and a child's card takes the same five minutes as an adult's.

Since 1 January 2024, this has been the rule for every foreign visitor entering by air, land, or sea, infants included, and it stands regardless of the adults' visa status. Families who used our service tell us the same thing every time: the card itself is easy, the workload is the multiplication. We are an independent application service, and one order covers the whole family for $15 per traveler, every card matched to its passport, confirmations in one inbox within 24 hours.

Why infants are not exempt

The MDAC exemption list is short and specific: Malaysian citizens, Singapore citizens, diplomatic and official passports, permanent residents and long-term pass holders, and four cross-border document categories. Age appears nowhere on the list, because the card records who is arriving, and an infant arriving on a foreign passport is a person arriving on a foreign passport. There is no under-X-free threshold and no add-child-to-parents-card shortcut.

This trips up parents who remember older systems or other countries where children were written onto a parent's form. Malaysia's system has no dependant field. Each traveler is a separate registration tied to a separate passport number, and the counter or e-gate matches each physical passport to its own record. The full who-needs-one breakdown is in do I need a Malaysia arrival card.

Who fills it in and how

A parent or guardian completes the child's registration; there is no requirement for the child to be present, sign, or be photographed. One adult can file the entire family in a single sitting from one device: parent one, parent two, child one, child two, each as its own Registration on the portal, each with that traveler's own passport details typed from the biodata page.

Use one email address for every family member. All confirmations and all PINs then land in one inbox, which turns the status check the night before departure into a two-minute sweep instead of a mailbox hunt. The submission window applies to the family as a unit: file everyone within 3 days before arrival, after flights and accommodation are final. Arriving 12 August 2026 means every card goes in between 8 and 11 August.

What a child's card asks for

The form blocks are the same as an adult's, and the answers come from the same two documents: the child's own passport and the family booking. The differences are only in where the data comes from:

A child's form, block by block

• Travel document details: the child's passport number, full name exactly as printed on their biodata page, nationality, and date of birth. Not the parent's passport, ever.
• Personal information: a parent's contact details and email address are standard here; the confirmation and PIN for the child's card go to the parent.
• Mode of travel and transport number: the same flight or vessel as the adults, the service that physically lands in Malaysia.
• Last port of embarkation: the same as the adults, the last place the family departs from before Malaysia.
• Accommodation of stay: the family hotel or address, the same as the adults' cards.

Per-child checklist

Before the family filing session, put this on the table for each child:

Special cases with children

Newborns: a baby needs their own passport to travel internationally, and once the passport exists, the card is filed against it. If the baby's passport arrived two weeks before the flight, file normally inside the window; nothing about a brand-new document changes the process.

Children with dual nationality: file the card against the passport they will present at Malaysian immigration, and present that same passport at the counter or e-gate, because the match is document-to-record. A child on a parent's long-term pass to Malaysia is exempt under the long-term pass category, but a child visiting on a tourist passport is not. If a child flies with only one parent, the card requirements do not change, and no consent letter is part of the MDAC; carry the usual notarized consent documentation some airlines and officers ask for, as a separate matter.

At the airport with children

Families with small children usually use the manned counters rather than autogates, since the automated lanes are built for solo travelers one at a time, and adults accompanying a child are generally directed to a counter; autogate eligibility depends on nationality and document type regardless of age. At the counter, the officer matches each passport to its record, and the family's five cards take seconds each when every passport number was typed correctly.

The full field-by-field reference for the family filing session is in our MDAC requirements guide, and the system overview lives in the complete MDAC guide. Prefer to hand the whole job over? Start your application: one order covers the family, $15 per traveler, every card verified against every passport, confirmation within 24 hours. Or file it all yourself, free, on the official portal.

Frequently Asked Questions