In 2020 Indonesia implemented an electronic visa (E-visa) system which makes the life of travellers much easier. Firstly, you can obtain your visa online before arriving in Indonesia. Secondly, you can extend your tourist visa within only a minute instead of visiting a local immigration office and wasting at least 3-4 days. The E-visa system is helpful for foreign travellers who visit the country for tourism, business, or social-cultural purposes.
While the whole process for applying was quite smooth, my partner and I discovered some issues when extending our tourist visas for Indonesia. After some research I realized that other people also had issues with the activation link and not being able to log into their imigrasi profile. With this blogpost I’d like to share possible solutions and create an up to date space to discuss upcoming problems and help each other on how to fix them.
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Main objectives of the Indonesian E-visa
The Indonesian E-Visa system is super helpful as it saves you time at the immigration counter when arriving in the country. You also don’t have to adapt your route to physically visit one of the immigration offices in order to extend your tourist visa.
I applied for the Single-Entry Visitor Visa (B211A) 3 days before arriving in Indonesia. Some posts online suggest that the e-visa takes 3 to 4 business days to process. In my case however it only took a few seconds. After filling out the online forms and transferring the payment I immediately received the visa via e-mail and pdf. Just follow the steps on the official E-visa Website for Indonesia to obtain your visa.
When I arrived in Indonesia I showed the digital pdf at the immigration counter and they put a sticker with the visa information into my passport. All in all a much faster process than going through the normal visa on arrival process.
Indonesian E-Visa issue & fix
This blogpost contains the issue I’ve had so far with using the Indonesian E-Visa platform. If you have experienced different ones please share them in the comments below! I can then tell you more about how it worked for me or other travellers can suggest a solution.
I tried to contact the E-visa team via Facebook and E-Mail but even after 4 days waiting there had not been any reaction. If you really can’t fix your problem I suggest to go to the closest immigration office instead and process your visa application or extension in person. I doubt that the immigration would care about technical issues with the E-visa system when you leave Indonesia and have overstayed.
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Account not active and log in not possible
When I created my profile (gmx e-mail address) on the E-visa platform I immediately received an activation link and could easily log into my profile a month later when I wanted to extend my visa. My partner however never received that activation link and was therefore not able to log into his profile. The E-visa system showed the following message: Profile not activated. However there was no option to resend the activation link or access the profile. He therefore thought he wouldn’t be able to extend his visa online.
Possible fix: You don’t necessarily need to log into the E-visa system to access and extend your visa. You should have received an e-mail from ‘DIREKTORAT JENDERAL IMIGRASI REPUBLIK INDONESIA <no-reply@imigrasi.go.id>’ with the subject ‘Indonesia Immigration One Platform System – EVISA’. This e-mail confirms that your visa application has been received and contains a link to check your visa status. If you click on that link it will forward you to a page where you can download your E-visa. On the visa document is a QR-code at the bottom of the page. Just scan the QR-Code. It will forward you to a page looking like the one below:
Click on ‘extend’ and then follow the steps to extend your Indonesian E-visa. No password, activated account or log in details needed. If you have never received that e-mail I don’t know how to access the page unfortunately as the link doesn’t contain either batch or visa number and is therefore not rebuildable.
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Do you need further help?
Summing up: If you receive the activation email right after making the first application, make sure to activate your profile right away. Then you shouldn’t have a problem to extend your visa. Also make sure to save the email leading to the batch where you can access the pdf of the E-visa which contains the QR-code. If you have one or both of these things then there shouldn’t be any problems to extend!
Have you experienced other issues with your e-visa? Are you stuck? Let me know in the comments below and we can try to find a solution together with this travel community!
8 Responses
Hi!
Interesting info. Thanks!
I’m considering a 60-day eVOA just to be safe and not having any issues with the extension of the 30-day eVOA. But the former is 3x the price of the latter. Do you know why? I’d prefer to save a few bucks and do the 30-day eVOA + extension but is there a risk of not getting the extension approved?
Hi! I think the 60 day is more expensive as you can theoretically extend that for another 30 days and it allows a longer stay in general.
Hmmm, what’s your travel plan? In case you have any problems extending online (which you can do a few days before end date) you could still go to the closest immigration office (e.g. Mataram, Denpasar…) in the worst case. 😊 But if you get the activation email when you first apply, and that email with the link leading to your batch then it shouldn’t be a problem to extend the visa online as well. 😊
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Hey, thanks for taking the time to share this info!!
I’m able to log into the visa site but there is no button for “extend” available.
Do you know if this pops up close to the end of your visa (I am 18 days into my visa) or do you think this is an error?
Hey Beth! Thank you for reading my blogpost. So these are possible fixes that come to my mind:
1. When you log onto the molina.imigrasi portal, does the main bar at the top have the button ‘extend’? What happens if you click on it?
2. Have you checked your e-mails for the one with the subject ‘Indonesia Immigration One Platform System – EVISA’? There’s a link in the e-mail which forwards you to a page where you can download the e-visa document. There should be a QR code at the bottom – What happens when you scan the QR code? Does that lead you to a page where you can extend?
3. If none of that works I recommend to go to the closest immigration office around 4-5 days before your visa expires and get it extended there.
I hope one of these work!
Best,
Linda
Hi Linda,
Thanks so much for coming back so quickly!
1. Yes the extend button is at the top, but when I click it, it shows a blank table saying “No data in table” there’s no hyperlinks anywhere to click on
2. I’m not sure if I’m blind but I’ve re downloaded the E visa multiple times and there’s no QR code at the bottom. There’s one at the top right that just takes you to the government website. I’ve tried to find pictures online of where it’s located but can’t see a QR code at the bottom centre of the E visa.
3. I fear I’m going to have to go to the immigration office – yes!
Anymore ideas are very welcome or if you have an image of where the QR code should be. Otherwise thanks so much for the help!
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