If you’re traveling to Taiwan soon, you’ve probably already come across the term TWAC. It’s the mandatory digital arrival card that fully replaced the old paper form on October 1, 2025. This guide covers everything, the registration itself, the most common technical problems, address errors, delayed emails, server issues, and an honest answer to why, even though the service is completely free, a lot of travelers still choose to pay a real person to file it for them.

What TWAC is and why it exists

The Taiwan Digital Arrival Card is an electronic entry form introduced by Taiwan’s National Immigration Agency (NIA). It replaces the old paper card that used to be handed out on the plane, and it’s meant to speed up border control. When an officer scans your finished QR code, your details come up automatically instead of being typed in by hand.

One thing worth being clear about. TWAC is not a visa. It doesn’t replace any visa requirement your passport might carry. It’s strictly a border security log, filed separately from your visa.

Who needs to file a TWAC

Every foreign national without a Taiwan resident permit (ARC) needs to file a TWAC, whether they come from a visa free country (the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Singapore, Japan, EU member states) or need a visa to enter. Visa free status just means you don’t need a visa. It doesn’t mean you’re exempt from the arrival card.

The only people exempt from filing are:

Taiwanese citizens.

ARC holders, or those with a long term resident visa.

Diplomatic or official status holders.

When exactly you need to submit the form

Here’s the most important update for 2026. Until mid June, the submission window was only 3 days before arrival. Since then it’s been extended to 7 days, meaning you can comfortably file your TWAC a full week ahead of your flight instead of scrambling at the last minute.

For example, if you’re arriving on the 15th of the month, you can file the form starting on the 8th. The system won’t let you submit earlier than that window, an early attempt just gets rejected with an error saying it’s too soon.

Step by step, what registration actually looks like

Step one, email verification. The process starts with entering an email address, and the system sends a confirmation code to it. Only after entering that code can you move on to the actual form.

Step two, uploading a photo of your passport. The system offers automatic reading of your passport details from a photo of the personal information page, saving you from manually typing your passport number, date of birth, and nationality.

Step three, travel details. Flight number, arrival date, mode of transport, plane or ferry.

Step four, your accommodation address in Taiwan. A hotel, an Airbnb, or the address of a friend or relative you’re staying with, along with a local contact number.

Step five, purpose of travel. Tourism, business, visiting family, and so on.

Step six, submitting and receiving your QR code. Once submitted, you get a QR code by email, usually within 5 minutes, though the system allows up to 30 minutes during busy periods.

If you’re traveling with family or a group, the official portal lets one person submit forms for up to 16 travelers in a single session, though every traveler still ends up with their own details and their own QR code in the system.

What happens at the airport

On arrival at Taoyuan (TPE), Songshan (TSA), or Kaohsiung (KHH), you show your QR code at the immigration counter. The officer scans it, checks your passport, and in most cases the process also includes a facial photo and a fingerprint scan at an electronic kiosk. The whole thing takes about 1 to 2 minutes per traveler, assuming you filed your TWAC ahead of time.

Missing it before your flight isn’t the end of the world. There are QR codes posted at airline check in counters and at ferry terminals where you can fill out the form on the spot. The catch is that while you’re doing that, standing on spotty airport WiFi in a moving line, everyone with a confirmation already in hand walks past you through the faster lanes.

Common technical problems and how to fix them

“I never got the QR code by email”

This is the single most common problem people search for help with online. Here’s what to do, in order:

Wait at least 30 minutes. Most codes arrive within 5 minutes, but the system allows for delays.

Check your spam or junk folder. Gmail, Outlook, and Yahoo sometimes filter automated messages from official sources.

If the code still hasn’t shown up after 30 minutes and isn’t in spam, the safest move is to resubmit with the same details. The system treats the most recent submission as the valid one.

“Address error on my accommodation”

The system sometimes rejects addresses that are too short or incomplete. If you hit this error:

Enter the hotel’s full name, along with the district or street, not just a number and an abbreviation.

Avoid special characters, stick to letters, numbers, spaces, and commas.

If you’re staying with a friend or relative, enter the full home address rather than just a neighborhood name.

“The form won’t submit” or “server not responding”

If there’s a technical problem with the portal itself:

Try a different browser, Chrome, Safari, Firefox. Sometimes a specific browser blocks scripts on the page.

Clear your cache or try an incognito window.

Check whether you’re using a VPN. Government portals sometimes block access from certain VPN servers.

If the system shows a server side error, wait and try again later. TWAC sometimes gets overloaded during peak hours around flights from Japan, Korea, and Southeast Asia.

“I need to correct information I already submitted”

The official site allows edits to an already submitted declaration through an “Update” function, before you go through immigration, using the email and details from your original submission. If your plans change, a different flight, a different address, just log back in and update the form. Resubmitting is expected behavior in the system, and the most recent submission is always treated as valid.

Documents worth having ready beforehand

Before you start filling out the form, have these on hand:

A valid passport with a clearly readable personal information page.

Flight booking confirmation with the exact flight number.

The full address of where you’re staying in Taiwan, including a local contact number.

An email address you’ll actually have access to during your trip.

The form really is free, so why does anyone pay for help

The official TWAC costs nothing. Any site posing as the official portal and charging for the registration itself is a scam, Taiwan’s own immigration agency has publicly warned travelers about fake sites, including a case involving a fake QR code displayed on an airport banner that tricked a traveler into paying a “processing” fee.

Our service never claims to be a government body, and never hides the fact that the card itself is free to file directly through the official site. What clients pay us for is something else entirely, a real person experienced in handling travel documents, who:

Checks every field carefully before it’s submitted, so there’s no mistake in the address, the passport details, or the date.

Tracks the exact 7 day window for you, if you’d rather hand over your details early, and files the form right on time.

Combines the whole family or group into one submission and sends every finished confirmation to a single email, instead of leaving you to wait on a separate message for each traveler.

Takes away the worry of submitting your information straight to a government system with no one checking it first.

Draws a clear line between “incorrect information” and “denied entry”. A lot of people assume a small mistake automatically means trouble at the border, when really it just needs to be corrected, which is exactly what we’re there to catch.

Handles flight changes for free. Instead of logging back into the government system yourself, hunting down codes, and working through the whole form again, you just email us about the change and we correct the card and send you the updated version right away.

Catches the kind of date of birth mix ups that happen more often than you’d think, someone born on June 12, 1965 typing 2026 instead of 1965 by mistake, a small slip we catch and fix before it becomes a problem at the airport.

Answers questions by email within minutes, rather than leaving your question waiting days for a reply from an official institution.

The payment isn’t for a card that would otherwise cost money, it doesn’t, no matter who files it. The payment is for the peace of mind of knowing someone experienced checked everything on your behalf, so you’re not standing confused at the counter in Taoyuan because of an address error or a QR code email that never arrived. Online Application TWAC

How to tell a scammer apart from legitimate help

Signs of a scam:

The site claims or implies it’s the official government portal.

It pushes a false sense of urgency, “approval within minutes”, “you risk being denied entry without us”.

It never mentions anywhere that the card itself is free.

Signs of a legitimate service:

It states clearly that TWAC is free, and explains exactly what you’re paying for.

It offers a real, modest, transparent price, with no hidden fees.

It gives you access to a real person for questions, not just an automated form.

It combines a family or group into one submission with a single confirmation email, instead of leaving you to track multiple separate messages and codes.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need to print the QR code? Not strictly. Immigration officers scan your passport and the details are automatically linked in the system. Still, it’s good practice to keep the QR code saved on your phone or as a photo, in case it’s requested.

Can I file one TWAC for multiple trips? No. Every entry into Taiwan requires a new submission, even if you’ve visited the country many times before.

What if I change my flight or address after submitting? Log back into the system and use the update function before you go through immigration.

Do children and infants need their own TWAC? Yes. Every traveler, regardless of age, needs individually submitted details, though they can all be filed together within one group submission of up to 16 people.

 

TWAC is mandatory for every foreign national without an ARC entering Taiwan, regardless of visa status. As of June 2026, the submission window has been extended to 7 days before arrival, and the form remains completely free on the official site, twac.immigration.gov.tw. If you’d rather hand off the responsibility for accuracy and timing to a real person, especially when traveling with family or a group, that’s a legitimate choice, as long as it’s clearly paid for as help, not presented as payment for something that’s legally free