Skip the Passport Queue to JB: Set Up Your MyICA QR Code First

Since January 2025, a MyICA QR code clears you through Woodlands and Tuas without the passport counter.

One code covers up to ten people in a car. You still carry your passport every trip.

More than 50 million travellers cleared with a QR code in the first year, about seven in ten car travellers among them.

How it works

You generate the code in the MyICA app before you travel, and the officer scans your phone screen. Your passport details sit linked behind the code, so the check still happens, faster.

In a car, up to ten people clear on a single code. On a bus, a family group of up to four can use the QR lanes set aside for it, and lanes for travellers in wheelchairs run there too.

Carry your passport anyway. ICA says so, and Malaysia asks for it on their side.

Who can use it

Foreign passport holders qualify, along with citizens and PRs.

First-time visitors to Singapore must clear with their passport the normal way, because ICA needs that first record. Later trips can use the QR code.

Entering on a different passport from your last visit? That first crossing goes back to the counter, then the QR code works again.

Setting it up

1. Download MyICA from the App Store or Google Play before your trip.
2. Citizens and residents can set up through Singpass. Filipino passport holders key in passport details by hand the first time, and the app stores them.
3. Generate your QR code. For a group, add the others so one code covers everyone in the car.
4. Screenshot it or keep the app open, since the hall connection can crawl on a busy Saturday.
5. Hold up the code for the officer to scan.

After you renew your passport, update your profile, through Singpass or by hand. An old passport number sends you back to the counter.

The Malaysia side

The ICA QR code covers the Singapore side only.

Every Filipino entering Malaysia fills in the Malaysia Digital Arrival Card (MDAC) online within three days before crossing. It is free on the official Malaysian Immigration portal at imigresen-online.imi.gov.my. Copycat sites charge a "processing fee" of forty or eighty dollars.

Singapore citizens skip the MDAC. Filipino PRs and work pass holders still fill it in.

More in our guides: crossing to JB on a Filipino passport, whether the JB grocery run is worth it, the RTS Link train, and living in Johor Bahru.

What is next

ICA calls its wider plan the New Clearance Concept. Motorcyclists at Woodlands moved to facial recognition instead of fingerprints from 31 March 2026, and facial clearance reaches Tuas Checkpoint through the third quarter of this year.

In 2027, ICA plans car clearance inside the vehicle: you stay seated, scan, and a camera checks your face. Cargo lanes will follow the same way.

Before a big trip, check the ICA site, the MyICA app, and the Malaysian Immigration portal for the current MDAC steps.

Photo: ZKang123 via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.