The SG Arrival Card Now Comes in Filipino, and You Can Scan Your Passport From September 30
From 30 September the MyICA app fills your SG Arrival Card by scanning your passport, and it now comes in Filipino, so update the app before you fly back.
You know the feeling. The plane has landed at Changi, the seatbelt sign is still on, and someone two rows back says the words that drop your stomach to the floor: "Na-submit mo na ba yung arrival card?" You dig for your phone with one hand, the wifi keeps cutting, and you are squinting at a form in English while the whole aisle starts to move. Every kabayan who flies home for Christmas and comes back has lived some version of that little panic.
From 30 September, ICA is making that moment easier. The Immigration and Checkpoints Authority is putting a refreshed SG Arrival Card inside its MyICA app, and two of the changes land close to home for us. You can scan your passport to fill in most of the form, and the card now comes in Filipino.
The changes coming on 30 September
The SG Arrival Card is the free health and travel declaration you submit before you enter Singapore. Nothing about that duty changes. You still fill it in, and you still do it within three days before you land. We walked through the basics of it in our guide to the arrival card you cannot skip, and that groundwork still holds.
ICA rebuilt the way you fill it in on your phone. From 30 September the enhanced card lives inside the MyICA app for the first time, with a cleaner layout and, for many of us, a language we grew up with. ICA has asked travellers to update their MyICA app to the latest version before submitting arrival cards from 30 September onwards. Do that update while you are still on home wifi in the province, not while you are chasing a signal at the airport.
The passport scan that saves you the typing
The passport scan is the change your thumbs will thank you for. Instead of keying in your passport number, your name the way it appears on the document, and your date of birth, you open the MyICA app and scan the biometric page of your passport. The app pulls your details off the page and fills the form for you.
That scan replaces the old "retrieve with passport" and "retrieve with visa reference number" steps that used to trip people up. Singapore citizens, permanent residents, and long-term pass holders can still pull their details through Singpass. For the rest of us arriving on a Filipino passport, the scan is the fast lane. Fewer typos means fewer of those declined-and-try-again moments when you are tired from an overnight flight.
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The trap that catches kabayan every ber-month season
Now the part that costs people real money. The SG Arrival Card is free. ICA could not be plainer about it: "Submission of the SGAC is free and should only be done via ICA's official channels." Those channels are the SGAC e-Service on the ICA website and the MyICA app, and nothing else.
Every peak season, a wave of copycat websites climbs near the top of a Google search for "Singapore arrival card." They look official, they ask the same questions, and then they charge you a fee to submit something that never cost a cent. ICA keeps a running list of these fake sites, and it has grown past 60. If a page asks for your card details to file your arrival card, close it. You are on the wrong site. If you are unsure about links like these, our piece on why every Filipino here should install ScamShield is worth ten minutes.
Who fills it in, and who can skip it
If you fly into Changi, you submit an arrival card. That covers Work Permit holders, S Pass and Employment Pass holders, dependants, and visitors coming back from a holiday or from home leave, the same as it was before.
Two groups get a pass. People transiting without clearing immigration do not need one. Singapore citizens, PRs, and long-term pass holders crossing by land through Woodlands or Tuas also skip it, which is the everyday reality for many kabayan who live in Johor Bahru and commute in. If that describes your border runs, the setup that matters more to you is the MyICA QR code, and we broke that down in our guide to clearing Woodlands and Tuas with a QR code.
Before your next flight home
Do three things while you have time and good wifi. Update the MyICA app to its newest version so the enhanced card shows up. Keep your passport handy for the scan when you fill the card in, within three days of your flight back. And bookmark the ICA website yourself so you never have to trust a search result during ber-month season, when everyone is booking and the fake sites come out in force.
One honest note, before we send you off: this is a fresh rollout, and app screens shift in the first weeks as ICA irons out the wrinkles. If a field looks different from what you expect, or the Filipino option does not show on day one, check the ICA website or the app's own help before you assume something is broken. The rules on our end stay put: free, within three days, and through ICA's official channels.
The arrival card was never the hard part of going home. The hard part is the goodbyes, and the mountain of pasalubong you somehow have to fit in one bag. Let the app carry the small stuff now. Scan, tap, done, and get back to the people waiting for you on both ends. Ingat sa biyahe, kabayan.
Photo: Sharon Hahn Darlin / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0
It comes in Filipino now, and that is not a small thing
The refreshed card now offers 19 languages, up from 12, and Tagalog is one of the seven new ones, alongside Bahasa Indonesia, Arabic, Spanish, Dutch, Italian, and Russian.
Picture your mother coming to visit the apo for the first time, phone in hand at the gate, reading a government form in her own language instead of guessing at English boxes. Picture the tita who travels once a year and dreads the paperwork more than the flight. A form that speaks Filipino takes a lot of that quiet fear out of the arrival. For a community this large in Singapore, our own language on an official app carries a weight that goes past convenience.
