Choosing a visa agent in Bali without getting scammed: 8 checks before you pay

No visa agent is licensed, accredited or mandated by Indonesian immigration: as of 8 September 2026, no official .go.id page we consulted describes any register or accreditation of agents, and the Directorate General of Immigration points people to the official portal alone, repeating since 2021 that there is no longer any need to go through a biro jasa. An honest agent therefore sells a service, not access. In practice: the state fee (PNBP) for a C1 tourist visa is 1,000,000 IDR for 60 days, the one for the E33G remote-worker KITAS is 7,000,000 IDR for a year — a visa the official page lets you apply for with no sponsor at all — and the one for the E28A investor KITAS is 7,000,000 IDR for a year, provided you personally hold at least 10 billion IDR in shares. On top of that, agency price lists recorded in Bali in August 2026 showed 8 to 15 million IDR in fees for an E33G and 20 to 35 million IDR for a work or investor KITAS. Since 29 May 2025, the photograph and interview at the immigration office have been compulsory in person for any stay permit extension: nobody can go in your place. And supplying a false document to obtain a visa exposes the agent and the client to a maximum of five years in prison and a 500,000,000 IDR fine (art. 123 of Law No. 6 of 2011). Here are the eight checks to run before you transfer anything.

A "visa agent" does not exist in Indonesian law

Immigration law does not recognise the agent. It recognises the penjamin, the guarantor: "a person or a company responsible for the presence and the activities of the foreigner during their stay in Indonesia" (art. 1(26) of Law No. 6 of 2011). That is a heavy legal role. Article 63 requires the guarantor to answer for your activities, to report any change of address, civil status or immigration status, and to pay the cost of repatriating you if your permit expires or a deportation is ordered. Article 118 punishes them with up to five years in prison and a 500 million IDR fine if they lie or fail to honour their guarantee.

A firm can be your guarantor, or merely your administrative service provider. Those are two different things, and blurring them is the first lever of every scam: a "sponsor fee" charged on a visa that requires no guarantor — the C1 and the E33G among them — has no object.

Immigration itself has been pushing people away from intermediaries for years. In December 2022, acting director general Widodo Ekatjahjana named a fraudulent site outright, indonesia-evoa.com. An instructive detail: the official URL cited at the time, molina.imigrasi.go.id, no longer responds today, and neither does visa-online.imigrasi.go.id, cited in 2021. Official addresses move. Always start from imigrasi.go.id rather than from a link that reached you on WhatsApp.

Check 1: does the company actually exist?

Before you talk visas, talk company. Three public, free registers answer in minutes, and a serious agent will hand you their numbers unprompted.

The matching activity code is KBLI 82199, "jasa pengurusan dokumen", which expressly covers immigration documents and travel visas. It is not an immigration accreditation, only a declared line of business — but its absence is a bad sign. Run the search again with spelling variants and without the "PT" or "CV" prefix before you conclude that a company does not exist: these databases are fussy about how you type.

Check 2: does the quote separate the state fee from the agent's own charges?

This is the check that eliminates 90% of bad quotes. The PNBP is a non-tax revenue of the Indonesian state, set by regulation — PP No. 45 of 2024 for immigration. That amount is neither negotiable nor "included in a package": it is paid to the state, against a billing code, and you are entitled to see it.

Here is what the official immigration pages said as of 8 September 2026.

Three things to take away. First, the E33G requires no sponsor: the official page states that you do not need a guarantor to apply for this visa. A "sponsor fee" charged on it has no object. Second, immigration breaks the E33G's PNBP down line by line: an agent who refuses to reproduce that breakdown in their quote is hiding something. Third, treat figures found elsewhere with suspicion: a Bali estate agency was advertising "around 13,000,000 IDR of government fees" for the E33G on 12 August 2026, close to double the official rate.

A word of honesty about the official figures themselves: two pages of the same imigrasi.go.id site do not agree. The "Izin Tinggal Keimigrasian" page gives 2,000,000 IDR for a 60-day ITK extension and 6,000,000 IDR for 180 days, while the general fee-schedule page gives 1,000,000 and 2,000,000 IDR — the latter carrying a "last updated 24 October 2023" note, that is, before the 2024 regulation. We are not picking a side: the only amount that counts is the one on your billing code and on your proof of payment.

That payment goes through a billing code (kode billing), which appears in the system once the application has been filed and is settled at designated banks; it generates a state revenue receipt bearing an NTPN, its transaction number. And since February 2024, the e-visa can be paid for directly by card on the official portal, with no Indonesian intermediary. An agent who never produces an NTPN may well be pocketing a state fee they never pass on.

Check 3: do the fees sit inside market ranges?

Here there is no official figure: agency fees are freely set. What follows comes from four commercial sources we recorded on 8 September 2026 — these are dated ranges, neither a price schedule nor a recommendation.

These sources do not agree with one another, and that is precisely the information: there is no verifiable "fair price". A quote well above deserves a written explanation; a quote well below deserves the same suspicion. The firm The Bali Lawyer flags the item that cheap work-KITAS quotes tend to bury: the DKPTKA levy of 100 USD per month per position, that is 1,200 USD for a year, payable by the employer under Ministry of Manpower regulation No. 10 of 2018. If it appears nowhere, the quote is incomplete. One last reflex: the official fee is set in rupiah, and Bali Visa Application points out that your bank applies its own rate, plus 2 to 5% in foreign transaction charges — always compare in IDR.

Check 4: does the agent know that biometrics cannot be delegated?

This is the quickest test, and the most revealing. Since 29 May 2025, under circular IMI-417.GR.01.01 of 2025, every foreigner must attend the immigration office in person for the photograph and the interview when applying to extend a stay permit — visa on arrival holders included. Registration and document submission happen online first, on the official portal, and then you turn up.

The official statement of 28 May 2025 makes no secret of the purpose: it is to "monitor the role of guarantors". Acting director general Yuldi Yusman notes in it that "the rate of stay permit abuse and of guarantors who do not shoulder their responsibility remains high". The same text gives the figures from a joint operation with BKPM in the first quarter of 2025: 546 foreigners suspected of abusing their stay permit and 215 companies suspected of being fictitious or problematic, whose licences were withdrawn. Administrative measures rose from 1,610 foreigners between January and April 2024 to 2,201 over the same period in 2025, up 36.71%.

An agent who offers to "handle everything without you moving" on an extension is therefore selling you something that has been impossible for over a year. Only the elderly, disabled, pregnant or breastfeeding, or people in an emergency, are given assisted on-site handling.

Two other things cannot be delegated: your account on the e-visa portal — the official C1 page specifies that the foreigner must hold an account on evisa.imigrasi.go.id before applying for a visa — and the truth of what you declare. If your agent fills in a form on your behalf that you have never read, you are the one who will have to answer for it at the interview.

Check 5: who will be your guarantor, and how do you get out?

Ask before you pay: "who appears as penjamin on my file?" Three possible answers — yourself (impossible for a KITAS), a third-party company supplied by the agent, or your actual employer.

If it is a company supplied by the agent, you are entering a relationship of dependence. The official ITK extension procedure spells it out: to change guarantor, you must attach a signed statement from the foreigner and a release letter from the previous guarantor. Leaving an agent who sponsors you therefore requires their signature. Have it written into your contract that this release will be issued on request, at no charge.

Check the official filing windows too, because they set your room for manoeuvre:

• ITK (visit): no earlier than 14 days before expiry, no later than the day itself.
• ITAS up to 1 year: no earlier than 30 days before, no later than the expiry date.
• ITAS beyond a year and ITAP: no earlier than 3 months before.

And hold on to this rule, which defuses the "pay quickly or you will be overstaying" pressure: if the application is filed and the fee paid before expiry, any overrun caused by administrative processing does not count as an overstay. It is written on the official ITK, ITAS and ITAP extension pages. The marker to watch is the payment date, not the issue date. For what happens once the line is crossed, we set out the amounts and the thresholds in our guide to overstaying in Bali in 2026.

One reassuring detail to finish: the stay permit is now virtual and sent electronically to the foreigner, the guarantor or the responsible party. There is no longer any reason to leave your passport in someone's drawer for weeks.

Check 6: is the offer even legal?

Some proposals are not cheap, they are criminal. The textbook case remains the investor KITAS sold to someone who does not invest. The official E28A page requires proof that you personally hold at least 10,000,000,000 IDR of shares in the guaranteeing company, registered with the Ministry of Investment, and adds a sentence few agents quote: if your shares fall below that threshold and you hold a director or commissioner role, it is a work visa you have to apply for, not an investor visa.

On an expat forum in Indonesia, a moderator summed up back in 2022 what an E28A obtained below the threshold implies: a fake company, fake share certificates, a fake capital transfer, a fake quarterly LKPM report, a fake tax return. That is a long list of breaking points at the first inspection — and the 2025 BKPM operation shows those inspections happen. The same thread sums the rule up: reputable agents do not offer fake investor visas.

What you are risking, according to the text of Law No. 6 of 2011:

• Article 123: up to 5 years in prison and a 500,000,000 IDR fine for anyone who knowingly supplies a false document or a false statement in order to obtain a visa or a stay permit for themselves or for someone else, and for the foreigner who uses it. The agent and the client fall under the same article.
• Article 122: the same penalties for a foreigner who misuses their stay permit, and for anyone who gives them the opportunity to do so.
• Article 75: immigration can cancel the stay permit, impose costs, restrict where you live, blacklist you and deport you, without going near a judge.

The Bali numbers are concrete. Between 15 April and 4 May 2026, operation "Dharma Dewata" led to 62 foreigners being picked up in Denpasar, Badung and Singaraja, for overstaying, falsified visa application data, illegal work and fraudulent investment set-ups, according to the news agency ANTARA. Over the first half of 2026, 342 foreigners were deported from Bali; nationally, immigration counted 10,911 administrative measures as of 13 August 2026, up 146.49% year on year. Before you listen to a salesperson, work out where you stand: our guide to KITAS and long-stay visas in Bali walks through the statuses, and our Bali visa guide covers short stays.

Check 7: what is the "fast-track" you are being sold actually worth?

It now has a place in a live court case. On 4 June 2026, the KPK, Indonesia's anti-corruption agency, named eight suspects in a case of extortion around the issuing of foreigners' stay permits between 2022 and 2026, among them a former deputy minister for immigration and a former acting director general. KPK chairman Setyo Budiyanto put a number on it: "at a minimum, the amount is 145.5 billion rupiah".

The most useful detail for you is the price. KPK spokesperson Budi Prasetyo described it this way: "the acceleration fees, which are illegal in nature, are set at between 1 million and 1.5 million rupiah per head". For reference: the regular procedure is advertised at 3 to 7 days. So if an agent offers you a modest supplement to "push your file through faster", you now know what it corresponds to.

An important point: the KPK presents visa agencies and sponsors as victims of the extortion, asked to pay outside the legal tariff to get files moving. We name no agency here — the case is ongoing and sources differ on which entities were searched. What matters is not a name but a criterion: a firm that refuses to charge a fast-track supplement is a firm protecting you.

Check 8: your recourse, before you need it

You choose a provider partly on what happens when things go wrong. Organise your evidence from the first transfer: a written contract stating the full registered name and the NIB, the PNBP/fee breakdown, the billing code and proof of payment in your name, correspondence kept, receipts. The same discipline as for any transaction between strangers — the one we set out for marketplace scams in Bali applies here word for word.

Then the channels:

• SP4N-LAPOR!, the national complaints desk for public services, linked from the footer of imigrasi.go.id.
• The Directorate General of Immigration: contact@imigrasi.go.id.
• The immigration office that covers you, which differs depending on where you live: Kanim Ngurah Rai (Jl. Perum Taman Jimbaran no. 1, Jimbaran, Badung), Kanim Denpasar (Jl. D.I. Panjaitan no. 3, Dangin Puri Kelod, Denpasar Timur 80235), Kanim Singaraja (Jl. Seririt Singaraja Pemaron, Singaraja 81151).
• Your own country's consular representation in Bali. France's consular agency in Denpasar, for example, sits at Griya Abasan no. 18, Padangsambian Klod, Denpasar Barat 80117, +62 811 39601401, Monday to Friday from 1pm to 5pm. Offices like this are official points of contact, but their services are limited: they will not argue your immigration case for you.
• For a financial dispute, filing a police report remains the ordinary legal route.

The firm xpnd, which follows overstay questions, states the single most important principle in this whole article: only official immigration officers can handle your overstay file, and you should ignore agents or individuals who claim they can erase an overstay for you. France's foreign ministry, for its part, puts the fine at one million rupiah a day for the first 60 days in its country advice updated on 4 September 2026, followed by removal and a ban on returning — check your own government's travel advice for the version that applies to you.

Frequently asked questions

Do you have to use a visa agent in Bali?

No. The Directorate General of Immigration actively invites people to use the official portal directly, and has been repeating since 2021 that there is no longer any need to go through a biro jasa. The official C1 and E33G pages state that no guarantor is needed, and payment by bank card has been possible since February 2024. A work or investor KITAS, on the other hand, involves a sponsoring company and a corporate file: there, professional help earns its keep.

How do you know whether a visa agency legally exists?

Ask for the full registered name and the NIB, then check for yourself. A PT's legal entity status can be checked on ahu.go.id, under Perseroan; a CV is found under "Badan Usaha Non Badan Hukum" on the same site; the NIB and declared activities are verified on oss.go.id. The activity code you expect to see is KBLI 82199, which covers the handling of immigration and visa documents. Repeat the search without the "PT" or "CV" prefix before concluding that nothing is registered.

What is the official price of an Indonesian visa in 2026?

It depends on the visa code, and it is published page by page on imigrasi.go.id. As of 8 September 2026: 1,000,000 IDR for a 60-day C1, 7,000,000 IDR for a one-year E33G, 7,000,000 IDR for a one-year E28A and 9,500,000 IDR for two years, 500,000 IDR for a 30-day ITK extension. Two pages of the official site do diverge on 60- and 180-day ITK extensions, the general fee-schedule page not having been updated since 24 October 2023: the amount that governs is the one on your billing code.

Can an agent do my biometrics for me?

No. Since 29 May 2025 and circular IMI-417.GR.01.01 of 2025, the photograph and interview at the immigration office are compulsory in person for any stay permit extension, visa on arrival included. Only the elderly, disabled, pregnant or breastfeeding, or people facing an emergency, receive assisted handling on site.

What do you risk with a fake investor KITAS?

The penalties are set by Law No. 6 of 2011: article 123 punishes with up to five years in prison and a 500,000,000 IDR fine anyone supplying a false document or a false statement to obtain a visa or a stay permit, for themselves or for another person, as well as the foreigner who uses it. Article 122 covers misuse of a stay permit and anyone who enables it. On top of that come the administrative measures of article 75: cancellation of the permit, costs imposed, deportation, entry on the blacklist.

How can I be sure my agent actually paid the fee to the state?

Insist on the billing code and the proof of payment. Immigration specifies that fees are settled at designated banks, from a billing code visible in the system once the application has been filed. Payment produces a state revenue receipt bearing an NTPN, its transaction number. An agent who never produces those documents has not proved they passed anything on.

How do you change agent when the agent is also your sponsor?

This is the most uncomfortable situation, and it is one to plan for. The official ITK extension procedure requires, when the guarantor changes, a signed statement from the foreigner and a release letter from the previous guarantor. Without that letter, the change stalls. So have it written into the contract, before any payment, that the release will be issued on request and free of charge. And check first whether your visa actually needs a guarantor at all: the C1 and the E33G do not.

Sources

Official

• Directorate General of Immigration — visa pages and PNBP fees by code: imigrasi.go.id/wna/daftar-visa-indonesia, pages for C1, E28A and E33G, consulted on 8 September 2026.
• Directorate General of Immigration — stay permits, procedures and filing windows and schedule of immigration fees (page carrying a "last updated 24 October 2023" note), consulted on 8 September 2026.
• Directorate General of Immigration — statement of 28 May 2025 on the in-person requirement for the photograph and interview (circular IMI-417.GR.01.01 of 2025).
• Directorate General of Immigration — official page on the guarantor (penjamin) and articles 63 and 118 of Law No. 6 of 2011.
• Text of Law No. 6 of 2011 on immigration (articles 75, 118, 121, 122, 123), published by the Depok immigration office.
• Directorate General of Immigration — directory of offices and e-visa payment by card, 6 February 2024.
• Yogyakarta immigration office — December 2022 warning about fake e-VOA sites; the molina.imigrasi.go.id portal it cited no longer responded on 8 September 2026.
• Ministry of Law — AHU Online company register; Ministry of Investment — OSS system; SP4N-LAPOR!.
• France Diplomatie — Indonesia, entry and stay, updated 4 September 2026; French embassy in Indonesia — consular agencies, updated 29 January 2026.

Media

• ANTARA, 62 foreigners picked up in Bali, operation Dharma Dewata, 5 May 2026.
• ANTARA, eight suspects and 145.5 billion IDR in the stay permit extortion case, 4 June 2026; detikcom, the price of illegal fast-tracking, 8 June 2026, and visa agencies presented as victims, 25 June 2026.
• JPNN Bali, 342 foreigners deported from Bali in the first half of 2026, 4 July 2026; CNN Indonesia, 10,911 administrative measures nationally, 13 August 2026.

Expert and commercial — price ranges and market practice, not official

• The Bali Lawyer, Bali visa costs for foreigners, official fees against agent prices, updated 17 August 2026.
• Propertia, the seven KITAS types, 12 August 2026; Bali ITAS Bureau, KITAS price list, 2026; Bali Visa Application, visa costs, 15 May 2026.
• xpnd, overstay penalties in Indonesia, 31 March 2026; Hukumonline, who has to pay the DKPTKA levy.
• LegalSatu, activity code KBLI 82199 "jasa pengurusan dokumen"; SmartLegal, how to check the legality of a PT or a CV online; Klikpajak, what the NTPN is.

Community

• Expat Indo Forum, thread on investor KITAS offered by agents.