How much cash you can carry into and out of Bali

Travel forums quote the hundred million rupiah figure with every possible distortion: as a ban, as a customs duty, as applying only to rupiah, as applying only on exit. The rule itself is three articles long, it lives in the anti money laundering law rather than in customs regulation, and it is stricter and simpler than the folklore.

The duty: declare from Rp 100,000,000

Pasal 34 ayat (1) of UU 8/2010:

Setiap orang yang membawa uang tunai dalam mata uang rupiah dan/atau mata uang asing, dan/atau instrumen pembayaran lain dalam bentuk cek, cek perjalanan, surat sanggup bayar, atau bilyet giro paling sedikit Rp100.000.000,00 atau yang nilainya setara dengan itu ke dalam atau ke luar daerah pabean Indonesia wajib memberitahukannya kepada Direktorat Jenderal Bea dan Cukai.

Four points, each of which contradicts something commonly repeated:

• Any currency counts. Rupiah, dollars, euros: the threshold is the
• equivalent value, not the currency.
• Paper counts as cash. Cheques, traveller's cheques, promissory notes and
• bilyet giro are inside the definition.
• The duty applies entering and leaving Indonesia.
• It is a declaration, not a limit. Nothing in the article caps what you may
• carry. It caps what you may carry silently.

One word decides the edge case. Paling sedikit means "at least", so exactly Rp 100,000,000 is inside the duty. The English pages that write "over IDR 100 million" have moved the line by one rupiah in the wrong direction.

The price of silence

Pasal 35 ayat (1) sets the sanction for not declaring: an administrative fine of 10 percent of the entire amount carried, capped at Rp 300,000,000. Not 10 percent of the part above the threshold: of the whole sum.

Declaring falsely has its own clause. Carrying more than the declared figure costs 10 percent of the excess, same cap, under Pasal 35 ayat (2).

The fine leaves your bag, not your bank

The detail no summary carries is Pasal 35 ayat (3):

Sanksi administratif ... diambil langsung dari uang tunai yang dibawa dan disetorkan ke kas negara oleh Direktorat Jenderal Bea dan Cukai.

The fine is taken directly from the cash in front of you and paid into the state treasury by the customs officer. There is no invoice and no appeal window before payment, though PMK 157/2017 Pasal 20 lets the officer accept electronic payment instead of taking the notes themselves, including at your own request.

If it cannot be taken there and then, PP 99/2016 Pasal 17 lets the officer detain the money against a receipt for at most five working days, after which the office pays the fine into the treasury out of the detained cash. What is left is held for you, and Pasal 17 ayat (6) turns it into state property if nobody collects it within 90 days of the end of the detention period.

Declaring is two documents, not one

Pasal 36 of the statute delegated the procedure to a government regulation. That regulation is PP No. 99 Tahun 2016, promulgated 31 December 2016, and its Pasal 3 ayat (1) makes the act conjunctive:

... dilakukan dengan: a. menyampaikan Pemberitahuan Pabean; dan b. mengisi formulir Pembawaan Uang Tunai dan/atau Instrumen Pembayaran Lain.

You submit the customs declaration, and you fill in the cash carrying form. PMK 157/PMK.04/2017 Pasal 5 ayat (2) calls the second one a pernyataan tambahan sebagai dokumen pelengkap, an additional statement completing the customs declaration. Lampiran A of that regulation prints it: bilingual, headed ADDITIONAL STATEMENT OF INTERNATIONAL TRANSPORTATION OF BEARER NEGOTIABLE INSTRUMENTS, four parts, 31 numbered fields, ending in an official use box whose tick options are True & Correct Declaration, False Declaration, Suspicious Carrying.

Pasal 6 ayat (1) of the same regulation puts both documents through an application system, with paper as the fallback when the system is unavailable. PMK 100/2018 Pasal 5 ayat (7a) obliges the head of the customs office to keep printed copies of the form where declarations are submitted.

Two deadlines, and the one on the way out is early

PMK No. 100/PMK.04/2018, in force since 3 September 2018, added them to Pasal 6. Arriving: paling lambat pada saat kedatangan, at the latest on arrival. Leaving, ayat (4): paling lambat pada saat sebelum ... mendapat tanda keluar dari pejabat imigrasi, at the latest before you receive the exit mark from the immigration officer. Ayat (5) defines that mark as the stamp, manual or electronic, recording your departure from Indonesia.

Read the departure rule twice. The declaration is due before immigration, not at a customs desk after it, which is the reverse of what most people assume from the arrival experience. The form exists and is live: BC 3.2, at ecd.beacukai.go.id/forms/bc32. Its own notice cites PBI 4/8/PBI/2002 for rupiah and PBI 19/7/PBI/2017 jo PBI 20/2/PBI/2018 for foreign banknotes, which tells you the counter applies all three regimes at once.

The arrival channel moved recently. A banner on the e-CD arrival form BC 2.2 states that since 1 September 2025 all passengers and crew bound for Indonesia file the customs declaration through allindonesia.imigrasi.go.id, the immigration arrival card. That card asks one customs question, "Do you carry goods that must be declared to Customs?", and lists the cash line as item B under it, in English: "Cash and/or payment instruments in rupiah or foreign currency equivalent to IDR 100,000,000.00 or more." On the older e-CD form BC 2.2 the same item sits third, because that list opens with animals, fish and plants; the lettering moved, the question did not.

Several English pages say the declaration may be filed up to 72 hours before landing. The figure is a conversion, not an invention. Immigration's release of 31 August 2025 opens All Indonesia "3 (tiga) hari sebelum tiba di Indonesia sejak di negara asal dan pada saat mendarat", three days before arrival and on landing, and the card's own code, in its build of 8 September 2026, offers arrival dates only from yesterday to the day after tomorrow. That is an opening window. The deadline is Pasal 6's, at the latest on arrival, and pages that print 72 hours as a deadline invert the two.

Rp 1,000,000,000 in foreign banknotes is a prohibition, not a permission

This is where the guides go wrong in kind rather than in detail. PMK 100/2018 Pasal 3 ayat (4): Orang perseorangan dilarang melakukan pembawaan uang tunai berupa Uang Kertas Asing ... paling sedikit setara dengan Rp1.000.000.000,00. An individual is prohibited. Ayat (5) leaves the carriage to a corporation, or to a person carrying on a corporation's behalf.

Bank Indonesia says the same thing from its own side. PBI 20/2/PBI/2018 Pasal 2 ayat (1): Setiap Orang dilarang, every person is prohibited. The ban lifts only for a Badan Berizin: under Pasal 1 angka 4 a corporation holding the Bank Indonesia carriage licence itself, a status ayat (3) reserves to banks and licensed non-bank money changers. A bank without the licence is still inside the prohibition. There is no form for a tourist here, because the licence is institutional and the per shipment approval is granted against a currency quota.

The fine is 10 percent of the whole sum carried, capped at Rp 300,000,000, under PMK 100/2018 Pasal 15A ayat (1) and PBI 20/2/2018 Pasal 19. When there is neither declaration nor approval, Pasal 15A ayat (7) stacks it with the Pasal 15 ayat (1) non declaration fine.

Pasal 15B is the practical part, and nothing in the English search results carries it. Foreign banknotes declared correctly but without approval dapat dibawa kembali ... tanpa dikenai sanksi administrasi berupa denda: they can be taken back, no administrative fine, at the first opportunity after the declaration is lodged. Honesty converts a Rp 300,000,000 exposure into a wasted trip for the money. The relief is conditional on the money actually leaving: Pasal 15A ayat (3) fines the same fact pattern, declared correctly but without approval, at the same 10 percent, so the choice is to take the money back at the first opportunity, not to argue.

A flag on our own sources. The official English notice on the arrival card says that carrying foreign banknotes worth Rp 1 billion or more requires permission from Bank Indonesia, which reads as an invitation to apply. PBI 20/2/2018 Pasal 2 and PMK 100/2018 Pasal 3 ayat (4) prohibit individuals outright. Both statements are official, they are not consistent, and we have found no document reconciling them.

Taking rupiah out: three obligations on one pile of notes

PP 99/2016 Pasal 4 adds a duty on top of the declaration: rupiah of Rp 100,000,000 or more leaving Indonesia wajib dilengkapi izin dari Bank Indonesia. PBI 4/8/PBI/2002 Pasal 2 is the instrument that issues it, and Pasal 4 ayat (1) is the sting:

Izin Bank Indonesia sebagaimana dimaksud dalam Pasal 2 hanya dapat diberikan untuk kepentingan: a. Uji coba mesin uang; b. Kegiatan pameran di luar negeri; c. Hal-hal lain yang menurut pertimbangan Bank Indonesia perlu diberikan izin atas dasar kepentingan umum.

Testing money handling machines, exhibitions abroad, cases Bank Indonesia judges to be in the public interest. Taking your leftover rupiah home is not on the list. Ayat (2) makes the permit single use, valid 30 working days at most, handed to customs at departure. Pasal 5 ayat (1) requires the written application at least 15 working days before you fly, answered within 10 working days.

Pasal 3 runs the other way, and no English page prints it. Bringing Rp 100,000,000 or more of rupiah into Indonesia, you must first have the notes checked for authenticity by the customs officer at the point of arrival.

Pasal 6 prices both: 10 percent of the sum carried, capped at Rp 300,000,000, for the missing permit, and separately for the missing authenticity check. And Pasal 10 says the stacking out loud. The AML reporting duty tidak menghapuskan, does not extinguish, either the permit duty or the authenticity check. Three obligations, three fines, one pile of notes.

One caveat on that article. Pasal 10 says so by reference to Pasal 16 ayat (1) Undang-undang Nomor 15 tahun 2002, the money laundering law that UU 8/2010 itself repealed. The regulation is 24 years old, BPK lists it as Berlaku with no amendment and no repeal, and the live BC 3.2 notice still cites it: the obligation stands, the cross-reference is dead. Bank Indonesia's current framework regulation on rupiah notes and coins, PBI No. 3 Tahun 2026, in force 31 March 2026, repeals only PBI 21/10/PBI/2019 and does not touch carriage across the border; the later PBI No. 4 Tahun 2026, in force 6 June 2026, only withdraws a 2001 commemorative issue.

Which exchange rate decides

Whether you are over the line is settled by the Minister of Finance's rate, under PP 99/2016 Pasal 20 and PMK 157/2017 Pasal 23: the rate the customs office uses for import duty. Not the airport board, not the market. The fine itself converts at the selling rate at the moment of payment, Pasal 23 ayat (5), and a currency absent from the Minister's list goes through US dollars first. That is why the round dollar figures the guides print, USD 6,000 or USD 6,500 or AUD 10,000, cannot be the test: the threshold is legally in rupiah and the conversion moves with the Minister's rate.

What the guides repeat, what the regulation says

On 17 August 2026 we searched the three leading Bali specific pages on this query, finnsbeachclub.com, investinasia.id and baliholidaysecrets.com, for eight strings: BC 3.2, out of Indonesia, 10%, 300 million, PP 99, PMK, Law No. 8, 2010. Zero hits, on all three pages, for all eight. A ninth string, departure, appears once on finnsbeachclub.com as a field on the arrival card, "your departure date to Indonesia", and three times in baliholidaysecrets.com's navigation menu; on none of the three does it appear in connection with taking money out. None of them cites an instrument, states the amount of the fine, or mentions that the duty runs in both directions.

finnsbeachclub.com tells the reader that above Rp 1 billion "you need special authorisation from the Bank of Indonesia before you travel". That is an instruction to request something an individual cannot hold. baliholidaysecrets.com presents the same prohibition as a declaration requirement, and its own comment thread, dated 19 January 2026, has a reader asking which threshold applies to USD 15,000, the question the page cannot answer. cekindo.com writes "amounts over IDR 100 million", where the statute says at least.

Where this rule lives, and why it matters

This is not customs law. The declaration duty sits in the money laundering statute, customs merely collects it and reports each case to the financial intelligence unit, PPATK, within five working days under Pasal 34 ayat (2), through the goAML application since 10 February 2022 under Perka PPATK No. 1 Tahun 2022, which implements PP 99/2016 Pasal 12 ayat (2). That is why the duty free thresholds in what you can bring into Bali say nothing about cash: the two regimes are separate laws with separate logic, and clearing one does not clear the other. PMK 157/2017 Pasal 29 makes the point in the other direction: cash carried in or out is exempt from import duty and import taxes. The money is never taxed as goods, it is only watched.

Two further thresholds are worth knowing because they are not fines. PMK 157/2017 Pasal 13 ayat (1) makes Rp 1,000,000,000 the "large amount" indicator that marks a carry as suspicious and opens interview, body search and baggage search: the same figure as the banknote ban, a different rule. And Pasal 30 ayat (2) allows cash carried clandestinely or hidden to be pursued as a criminal customs investigation on top of the administrative fine. Pasal 30 ayat (1) states the order: Pengenaan sanksi administratif ... tidak menghapuskan ketentuan pidana di bidang kepabeanan dan tindak pidana pencucian uang. The administrative fine does not extinguish the criminal provisions, on customs or on money laundering.

What we could not establish

• Whether the arrival side Additional Statement can be completed online at
• all. PMK 157 Pasal 6(1) sends the form through the application system and
• PMK 100 Pasal 5(7a) requires printed copies at the counter, but the e-CD
• portal publishes an online cash form for departure only. The arrival card
• collects the tick, the currency and the value, and none of the form's
• distinctive fields. That you tick on the card and then complete the paper
• statement in front of the officer is an inference. We have not seen it.
• Whether Ngurah Rai meets PP 99 Pasal 5, which obliges the airport
• operator to provide signage in several languages, a place to complete and
• hand over the forms, and an examination room. No compliance report is
• published.
• Whether Pasal 15B's relief formally reaches an individual. It is drafted
• around the approval of Pasal 7 huruf b, which exists only for corporate
• carriage; that it also covers a traveller for whom no approval exists at
• all is our reading of the text, not something the text states.
• No per case fine schedule exists. The 10 percent and the Rp 300,000,000 cap
• are the whole of the published tariff, and there is no published record of
• how often the discretion in PMK 157 Pasal 20, paying the fine other than
• out of the cash itself, is exercised.
• The customs administration publishes no dedicated public FAQ on carrying
• cash. beacukai.go.id/faq/pembawaan-uang-tunai.html returns HTTP 200 and
• serves the generic FAQ index. The clearest official plain language
• statements are the notices printed inside the forms themselves, which is
• why they are cited above as sources rather than as illustrations.