Thailand Digital Arrival Card: What It Is and How to Submit It.

What the Thailand Digital Arrival Card is

The Thailand Digital Arrival Card, usually shortened to TDAC, is an online form that every non-Thai national completes before entering the country. The Immigration Bureau's TDAC user guide describes it as an online form designed to replace the paper arrival card, for travellers arriving by land, air or sea. It costs nothing, and it is not a visa.

The paper form it replaced was the TM.6, the small card that used to be stapled into a passport at the border. The Royal Thai Embassy in Bucharest set out the change: from 1 May 2025, all non-Thai nationals entering Thailand by land, air or sea complete the TDAC instead of the TM.6 card.

What comes back is a document carrying a personal QR code, sent to the email address given during submission. That document is what an immigration officer asks to see alongside the passport.

Everything below was checked against the Immigration Bureau's own guide and FAQ at application version 2026.08.00, released on 13 August 2026. The portal has shipped a release most months since launch, so anyone reading this long after that date is looking at a system that may have moved on.

Who must submit a TDAC, and who does not

The rule is drawn wide. The Bureau's TDAC FAQ states that all non-Thai nationals are required to submit their travel information before arriving in the Kingdom, whatever their mode of transport.

Two lines there catch people out. A baby travelling on a parent's lap needs a card of their own, and a diplomatic passport does not exempt a holder who is not Thai.

The transit distinction turns on immigration rather than on the airport. A passenger who stays inside the terminal submits nothing. A passenger who clears the counter to spend a night in Bangkok submits a card like anyone else.

Thai nationals sit outside the system entirely, which matters for mixed families. A Thai spouse fills in nothing, while the foreign spouse and any children on foreign passports each need their own entry.

When to submit: the three day window

The card goes in within three days of arrival, counting the arrival date itself. The FAQ words it twice, once as three days in advance including the date of arrival and once as up to 72 hours before entry, which is why both figures circulate. Neither page reconciles the two, so the tighter wording, the 72 hours, is the one that satisfies both.

There is no early filing. Someone booking a flight four months out cannot lodge the card now and forget about it.

The card is valid from the moment of submission until arrival in Thailand. No processing or approval time is published: the document arrives by email, and the decision on entry happens at the counter.

The system sends no reminder either. The FAQ is explicit that it issues no notification or alert to a passenger before travel, so a card that gets forgotten stays forgotten until the airport.

What you need before you start

The user guide lists five categories of information: passport, personal, travel, accommodation in Thailand, and health declaration. An email address is the sixth practical requirement, because that is where the finished card is delivered.

In plainer terms that means passport details, the flight number and arrival date, the address where you will be staying, the purpose of the trip, and a health declaration where one is triggered.

The health section is conditional. It appears where the Ministry of Public Health lists your nationality, the country you boarded in, a country you stayed in during the two weeks before arrival, or your flight. Most travellers never see more than a short set of questions.

Two constraints are worth knowing before the form opens. Every field is entered in English, and progress cannot be saved part way through, so the whole submission happens in one sitting. The FAQ puts that sitting at about three to five minutes per person with the information ready.

How to submit the TDAC step by step

Submission runs through the Immigration Bureau's TDAC portal. The user guide sets out eight steps for a single traveller:

1. Open the Arrival Card form.
2. Enter personal and passport details, either by hand or by scanning the passport machine-readable zone, the two lines of coded text across the bottom of the photo page. The guide asks users to recheck anything the scan fills in.
3. Enter the trip details and the accommodation address in Thailand.
4. Complete the health declaration if the system asks for one.
5. Preview everything and correct what is wrong.
6. Enter the email address that will receive the card.
7. Accept the terms and conditions, then submit.
8. Download the card, which also arrives by email.

A group runs the same way with one extra step. After the first traveller, the form offers a Same as Previous Traveller option for shared trip and accommodation details, each further person is added in turn, and the whole group is previewed and submitted together.

Anyone who arrives without a card can still submit at a kiosk. The FAQ lists kiosks and wifi at five airports: Suvarnabhumi, Don Mueang, Phuket, Chiang Mai and Hat Yai. The Bucharest notice is candid about what that route costs in time, warning of extra delay and a possible queue.

The submission channel itself is in motion. Nation Thailand reported in June 2026 that the Immigration Bureau was trialling a mobile app called THIM, which builds a TDAC from a photographed passport in under three minutes and handles up to ten people at once, with a full launch scheduled for August 2026. The Bureau's own guide and FAQ still point travellers to the website, so the portal remains the documented route until the official pages say otherwise.

What it costs, and the sites that charge for it

Nothing. The Royal Thai Consulate-General in Dubai states it plainly: submission is free of charge, and available three days preceding the travel date.

That matters because a paid market has grown up around a free form. The Bangkok Post reported in March 2026 that the Immigration Bureau had warned travellers about websites selling TDAC submission, quoting the immigration spokesman as saying that registration is completely free of charge and that any website requesting payment was not affiliated with the government. The Bureau put the scale at a minimum of 10 percent of foreign arrivals having used such sites, which often charge from USD 20 to USD 90.

The money is the smaller problem. The Bureau's warning was that personal data entered on those sites could be misused, which means a passport number, a date of birth and a Thai address handed to a party with no accountability to anyone. The Immigration Bureau's own main site carries a verified link and QR code through to the real platform, which is the surest way to reach it.

Paying an agent is a different matter from paying a scraper site. The FAQ confirms that agents, tour leaders and travel agencies may submit on behalf of clients where they are authorised and the information is right, so a tour operator filing for a group of ten is using the system as designed.

What happens if you arrive without a TDAC

No published penalty attaches to the traveller. The FAQ does not answer this case directly. Its nearest answer is to a different question, about passengers who submit incorrect information, and states that there is no penalty for airlines and that passengers may be denied entry based on immigration discretion.

That is as close as the official pages come, and it repays careful reading. There is no fine on any published schedule. There is no fixed consequence either. What there is instead is an officer with discretion and a queue building behind you.

The kiosks exist for this case, which is why they sit at five of the busiest arrival points. Filing at the airport is slower than filing at home, and it is not a punishment.

Any figure quoted elsewhere as the fine for a missing TDAC does not come from an official Thai source.

Fixing a mistake, and submitting for a group

Mistakes split into two kinds. Most fields can be corrected through the Update Arrival Card function, which finds the record from the arrival card number, the date of birth and the nationality, then lets the details be edited and resubmitted.

Some fields cannot be edited at all. The user guide's remarks list three: full name as it appears in the passport, nationality and date of birth. The FAQ and the Bucharest notice add a fourth, the passport number, though the portal's release notes record passport number editing being enabled in May 2025. An error in the name, nationality or date of birth calls for a new registration rather than an edit, and a passport number error may too.

Submitting twice is allowed, and it is not treated as a problem. The FAQ states that the card can be submitted multiple times with the correct information, and that the system considers only the most recent submission valid.

Group submissions cap at ten travellers per application. A party of twelve therefore goes in as two submissions rather than one.

What the TDAC does not do

The most common misreading of this form is that it does something for a visa. It does not. The user guide states in its own remarks that the Thailand Digital Arrival Card is not a visa, and the Dubai consulate is more explicit still: the card is not a visa and does not replace one, and a traveller whose nationality needs a visa still applies for an e-Visa separately as well as completing the card.

Nor is it permission to enter. The card is information given in advance, and the decision belongs to the officer at the counter.

It also does not carry over. One card covers one entry, so a resident who flies to Singapore for a weekend submits a fresh card on the way back. Anyone weighing up long-term visa options in Thailand, or the requirements for a Thai retirement visa, is dealing with a separate application on a separate system, and the arrival card sits on top of whichever route they take. The same holds for a Thailand visa application made from abroad.

After you arrive

The TDAC ends at the immigration counter. Two reporting duties begin after it, and neither is discharged by the card.

The first belongs to the accommodation. Under section 38 of the 1979 Immigration Act, as the Immigration Bureau's residence notification portal sets out, house owners, heads of household, landlords and hotel managers who accommodate a foreign national must notify local immigration within 24 hours of that person's arrival. TM30 Thailand explains who files it and how.

The second belongs to the foreign national. Anyone who stays in Thailand beyond 90 days makes their own notification of residence to the Immigration Bureau, and repeats it for as long as the stay runs. The deadlines and filing routes are set out in the 90 day report in Thailand.

Neither duty has anything to do with the arrival card, and neither is triggered by it.

When a lawyer or visa agent is worth it

For the card itself, never. A TDAC takes minutes, costs nothing and needs no representative. Anyone selling help with it is selling convenience at best.

The work that follows arrival is where professional help starts to earn its fee. Extensions of stay, the residence notification when a landlord will not file it, a work permit tied to an employer, and the reporting calendar that comes with a long stay are all governed by rules that shift and by offices that apply them differently.

Visa agencies in Thailand handle the routine filings for people who would rather not spend a morning at an immigration office, and firms offering visa and immigration services in Thailand tend to bundle the reporting with the permission it attaches to. Immigration lawyers in Thailand deal with the harder cases: a refused extension, a status that has lapsed, a sponsorship that has to hold up under scrutiny. A director whose permission to stay runs through a work permit held through a Thai company carries the widest exposure, because the visa, the permit and the reporting all move together.

A lawyer can check which of those obligations actually applies to a particular stay, and when each one falls due. The arrival card, at least, is the one thing on that list nobody needs help with.