Car Ownership Transfer Malaysia 2026: JPJ and PUSPAKOM

A car ownership transfer in Malaysia is one of those errands that sounds like a single visit and turns out to be three: an inspection centre, a counter, and a quiet argument about who pays for what. Alamak — and the part that catches people out is not the queue. It is that two of the three have a clock running on them.

What follows is the published version: conditions and forms from JPJ’s two transfer guides, voluntary and other-than-voluntary; the inspection name, fee and documents from PUSPAKOM’s Inspection Types & Fees page; the fee behind that fee from the Schedule to P.U. (A) 7/2016; the deadlines from section 13 of the Road Transport Act 1987; the loan part from section 12 of the Hire-Purchase Act 1967. Where an official page prints no figure, none is printed here either.

Quick Answer: the vehicle goes to PUSPAKOM for a Transfer of Ownership Inspection — RM 30.00, one document, report valid 60 days — and then both parties go to JPJ, where a private individual vehicle needs the registered owner and the new owner present for biometric fingerprint verification, a completed Borang JPJK3 and the VOC, with no finance-company claim, Customs record or blacklist record blocking the transaction. Motorcycles are the exception to the inspection. Road tax and insurance do not come with the car.

• The deadline nobody diaries: section 13 gives each side 7 days from the change of possession, and says the vehicle shall not be used beyond 7 days unless the new owner is registered.
• The fee that is not published: JPJ’s guides say the fee is paid as prescribed, and JPJ’s own vehicle licensing fee page carries new registration only. There is no transfer figure on it.
• The code everyone quotes: PUSPAKOM’s page calls it Transfer of Ownership Inspection (MV15). The other bracketed code on that page, (B7), is the Hire Purchase Inspection — a different errand at a different price.

Who shows upThe inspectionSeven days

Who has to show up, and what each side signs

JPJ publishes two guides, and the difference between them decides half of your morning. One is for a pertukaran milikan secara sukarela — a voluntary transfer, which is what an ordinary sale is. The other is for a transfer other than voluntary: repossession, death, forfeiture, an insurer writing the vehicle off, an owner who cannot be found.

On the voluntary side, general condition 1 is the one that fixes your calendar. The registered owner and the new owner of a privately owned individual vehicle must both attend in person for biometric fingerprint verification. Condition 2 closes the obvious escape hatch: a representative may only be appointed where the vehicle is not individually owned. So for two ordinary people selling one ordinary car, both of them are at that counter, in person, for the transaction.

On the non-voluntary side only the new owner attends for biometrics, and the representative rule is the same. That asymmetry makes sense once you see what it is for: in a repossession or an inheritance there is no seller standing there to give consent, so the consent comes from a document instead.

The form is the other split. A voluntary transfer runs on Borang JPJK3; a transfer other than voluntary runs on Borang JPJK3A. Both are the 2024 revision, Pind.1/2024, on JPJ’s forms page, and the JPJK3 PDF itself carries an update date of 01/10/2024 with a filing note asking for the Perakuan Pendaftaran to be attached.

The inspection: RM 30, and a report that expires

PUSPAKOM calls it a Transfer of Ownership Inspection, and prints the code (MV15) beside the name. The fee is RM 30.00 and the document list is a single line: the vehicle’s registration card (original), or the Vehicle Ownership Certificate. The stated reason is not roadworthiness — it is provenance. The page says the inspection helps protect the new owner from buying or owning an unlawful vehicle, such as a cut-and-join vehicle.

That RM 30.00 is not a price PUSPAKOM chose. The Schedule to P.U. (A) 7/2016, the Road Transport (Fees for Inspection of Motor Vehicles Services) Rules 2016, sets RM 30 in the Transfer of Ownership Inspection column for both private-use individual car (registration code AB) and private-use company car (AC). The published price and the gazetted fee are the same number, which is a pleasant thing to be able to say about any Malaysian fee.

The same Schedule answers the motorcycle question without ambiguity. For private-use motorcycle (code AA) and motorcycle with side car, the Transfer of Ownership Inspection column is a dash — no fee, because no such inspection. JPJ words its condition the same way: motor vehicles except motorcycles must undergo and pass an inspection at an appointed motor vehicle inspection centre. PUSPAKOM’s own page words it more loosely, as “all private vehicles”, which is the kind of gap worth knowing about before you argue with anybody. The condition that binds the transfer is JPJ’s, because JPJ is the registering authority.

Then the clock. PUSPAKOM’s FAQ says the Transfer of Ownership Inspection report is valid for 60 days, and that exceeding the 60 days means the vehicle must undergo the inspection again. That is the number to put in your phone, because a used-car sale that stalls over financing or a missing document is exactly the kind of sale that drifts past two months.

Booking is one channel: PUSPAKOM’s Appointment page and its FAQ both send every booking to gicheck.my. On the day, be present 20 minutes before your inspection time and no later than 10 minutes after it; the examiner takes about 1 hour, the result is given at the Result Counter and the digital report is emailed to the address registered in GiCheck. Payment is cashless only. One detail saves a second trip: the owner need not bring the vehicle in person — a representative is allowed, provided the representative’s details go into GiCheck at the time of booking and the representative brings an NRIC or passport.

For what the examiner measures, how the branches differ and what happens on a fail, this site has a separate guide to PUSPAKOM inspections, their types and fees.

Everything that has to be in the folder

JPJ’s voluntary guide lists seven general conditions, and the folder is most of them. Identity first: MyKad, MyTentera, MyPR or passport for an individual; for a company, association, cooperative, statutory body or embassy, an SSM Corporate Information document or the equivalent constituting document, a board resolution where board consent to the sale is required, and an official letter of appointment carried by whoever is sent. JPJ’s vehicle FAQ adds a useful simplification — for a transfer transaction the Corporate Information document alone is required and sufficient. Then the two documents specific to the transaction: a completed Borang JPJK3, and the VOC, which must be produced at the time of the transfer application. The VOC is also one of the two things PUSPAKOM accepts at the inspection, so it does double duty.

If the registration certificate is missing, that is a separate application before this one. JPJ’s duplicate registration certificate page has been restricted since 21 June 2010 to the registered owner, an authorised officer of a government agency, company or association, or next of kin, and takes two completed JPJ K7 forms plus a checklist form and the prescribed fee. Where the registered owner has died, the JPJK7 must be signed by whoever the court appointed, the person named in a Grant of Letters of Administration or a Grant of Probate, or AmanahRaya.

Condition 4 is the one that quietly fails transfers. There must be no restriction on the transaction — JPJ names an ownership claim record by a finance company, an unsettled Customs tax record, a blacklist record, or other registration conditions. None of those show up on the day as a polite warning. They show up as a refusal at the counter, which is why they are worth checking before both parties take a morning off work.

Three special cases are easy to hit and hard to fix on the spot. If the registered owner is abroad: a passport copy certified by the Malaysian Embassy where that owner is, plus a statutory declaration consenting to the sale, signed in front of and verified by a Malaysian Embassy officer. If the registered owner has changed citizenship: a JPN letter confirming the change, and that owner must attend JPJ in person regardless. And where the vehicle belongs to a company or partnership wound up or in liquidation under receivers, managers or liquidators: a sale consent letter and an SSM-certified copy of Form 59, Form 70 or Form 72.

When the loan is not finished

Two different laws have to agree before anything moves. JPJ’s side is condition 4 above: an ownership claim record by a finance company is a restriction, and a restricted transaction does not go through. While the financier’s claim is on the record, the name on the registration cannot simply change to the buyer’s.

The Hire-Purchase Act 1967 supplies the other side, and it is more generous than most people expect. Section 12(1) says the right, title and interest of a hirer under a hire-purchase agreement may be assigned with the consent of the owner — the financier — or, if that consent is unreasonably withheld, without it. Section 12(2) goes further: except as the section itself provides, no payment or other consideration may be required by an owner for that consent, and where an owner requires one, the consent is deemed to be unreasonably withheld. Section 12(3) gives the hirer a route to the High Court for a declaration that consent was unreasonably withheld.

What the financier may ask for is set out too. Under section 12(4), as a condition of granting consent, the owner may stipulate that all defaults under the agreement be made good, and may require the hirer and the assignee to execute an assignment in a form the owner approves — under which the assignee becomes personally liable for the remaining instalments and indemnifies the hirer — and to pay the reasonable costs of stamping or registering that assignment. Those are the lawful asks. A fee simply for saying yes is not one of them.

If instead the buyer is taking a fresh loan on the used car, a second inspection enters the picture. Section 4G(1) of the same Act requires the person intending to enter into the hire-purchase agreement to declare in writing any defects of the second-hand motor vehicle in accordance with the inspection report by the relevant authority determined by the Controller, and section 4G(3) makes a contravention an offence. PUSPAKOM prices that one separately: Hire Purchase Inspection (B7), RM 60.00, with the registration card (original), the VOC, or a copy of the registration card endorsed by JPJ or a Commissioner for Oaths. A financed purchase therefore needs two inspections, not one, and RM 30.00 plus RM 60.00 is the published arithmetic.

One boundary worth stating plainly, because it runs the other way. Repossession is not a shortcut around a stalled sale. Section 16(1) of the Act allows an owner to repossess for instalment default only where the instalments paid amount to not more than 75 per cent of the total cash price, there have been two successive defaults, and a notice in the form of the Fourth Schedule has been served with a period, not less than 21 days, that has expired. Where more than 75 per cent has been paid, section 16(1a) requires a court order first. And within 21 days of taking possession the owner must serve a Fifth Schedule notice on the hirer and every guarantor. Those two schedule notices are exactly what JPJ asks to see when a repossessed vehicle is later transferred.

Road tax and insurance do not travel with the car

Two things that feel like they belong to the car belong to the person instead, and both have their own paperwork.

Road tax. Section 13(1)(a) tells the registered owner to deliver the registration certificate and the licence to the new owner — unless the licence is being surrendered under section 19. Section 19(1) is the surrender route: the holder of a motor vehicle licence may surrender it at any time and is entitled to a rebate of such amount as may be prescribed, with no refund where the licence was cancelled or suspended under section 17. Section 19(2) puts an outer limit on claiming: no proceedings to secure that rebate unless brought before the expiration of 1 year from the date the licence expired. And section 13(1)(c) adds the catch — where the licence has been surrendered, the vehicle shall not be used until the new owner takes out a new one.

JPJ’s cancellation and refund procedure carries the operational detail. The refund must come to not less than RM 5.00 to be paid at all, but there is no minimum remaining period on the licence. Where the cancellation follows a transfer transacted online rather than at the counter, the cancelled LKM disc and the original e-service receipt must reach JPJ within 2 working days of the transfer date, with supporting documents allowed to follow within 7 working days. Where it is done at the counter, the cancelled original disc is surrendered at that counter on the same day and at the same place, with the same 7 working days for the rest. The paperwork is two copies of Borang JPJ K6 (Pind. 1/2018), the disc itself — or a police report in its place where the vehicle was in an accident, stolen or lost to a natural disaster — a MySikap printout of the refund particulars, and the front page of the registered owner’s bank statement showing an active account.

Rates and renewal are a separate subject, covered in this site’s guide to road tax by engine capacity.

Insurance. The Act does not attach cover to the vehicle either. Section 90(1) makes it unlawful to use, or cause or permit another to use, a motor vehicle unless a third-party policy or security complying with Part IV is in force in relation to that user. Section 90(2) sets the penalty: a fine not exceeding RM 1,000 or imprisonment not exceeding 3 months or both, and disqualification from holding or obtaining a driving licence for 12 months unless the court orders otherwise for special reasons. Read alongside section 15(1), which forbids using a vehicle with no motor vehicle licence in force, the position on the morning after a sale is clear enough: the buyer needs cover in their own right before the car moves, and — if the seller surrendered the old road tax — a new licence too.

There is a duty on the seller’s side too, and it is the one people forget. Section 102(1) says that where a certificate of insurance has been delivered and the policy is then cancelled, the person to whom the certificate was delivered shall, within 7 days from the cancellation taking effect, surrender the certificate to the insurer — or make a statutory declaration if it has been lost or destroyed. Failing to do so is an offence. Section 102(2) puts a parallel duty on the insurer: where a policy has been cancelled, transferred to another person or altered to cover the vehicle for a different purpose, the insurer must inform the Director who registered the vehicle, on pain of a fine not exceeding RM 300.

The 7 days in section 13, and what happens if you miss them

Section 13 of the Road Transport Act 1987 is short, and it is the part of this errand with real teeth. On a change of possession upon a voluntary transfer, three things happen on the same 7-day clock.

The registered owner shall, within 7 days after the change of possession, forward to the Director of a registration area a statement in the prescribed form, and deliver to the new possessor or new owner the registration certificate and — unless surrendering the licence under section 19 — the licence. The new possessor or new owner shall, within 7 days after the change of possession, forward to the Director a statement in the prescribed form together with the registration certificate and the prescribed fee. And the vehicle shall not be used for more than 7 days after the change of possession unless the new possessor or owner is registered as the owner.

The proviso is narrow but real: subsection (1) does not apply where the change of possession is consequent on a contract of hiring and the period of hiring does not exceed 1 month. Renting a car for a fortnight does not put you on this clock.

Section 12(2) sits behind all of it as a general duty: the registered owner shall forthwith inform the Director in writing of any circumstance or event which affects the accuracy of any entry in the register, and forward the registration certificate at the same time. Section 12(5) makes failing that, without reasonable excuse, an offence.

What happens if the days pass? Section 13 sets no penalty of its own, which is where section 119 comes in: a person who without lawful excuse contravenes any provision of the Act is guilty of an offence, and where no special penalty is provided is liable on a first conviction to a fine not exceeding RM 2,000 or imprisonment not exceeding 6 months, and on a second or subsequent conviction to a fine not exceeding RM 4,000 or imprisonment not exceeding 12 months or both. That is a ceiling a court may impose on conviction, not a bill handed over at a counter — and it is a different thing again from the practical mess of a car still registered to a seller who is collecting the buyer’s summonses.

E-hailing, taxi and anything with a permit

General condition 6 of both transfer guides is one line and it catches a lot of people: the registered owner’s commercial vehicle permit must have been cancelled first. An e-hailing car, a taxi, a hire car or anything else carrying a permit is not transferred as-is — the permit comes off, and only then does the name change.

It also closes the online route. JPJ’s vehicle FAQ allows an online transfer through the Public Portal only where the vehicle is a private individual vehicle or a private company vehicle — a motor vehicle with no permit. A permitted vehicle is a counter job. The same FAQ answer says foreigners are not permitted to transact online and must attend a JPJ counter, which is worth knowing early if either party is not Malaysian.

Two more permit-side details from the guides: off-road commercial vehicles need a Special Inspection, which JPJ refers to there as B2, and machinery, fire, tow-truck and hearse vehicles need a PG11A or PG13B initial inspection instead. Those are inspection types in their own right, not variations on the RM 30.00 transfer inspection. A commercial vehicle also carries a cycle the private one does not — PUSPAKOM requires a Routine Inspection every 6 months, an e-hailing vehicle priced at RM 55, with the E-Hailing Vehicle Permit reference number among the documents to bring. If a car has been earning through an app, its next routine inspection is part of what is being handed over.

When it is not an ordinary sale

Where there is no willing seller standing at the counter, JPJ’s other guide takes over, and the pattern is always the same: a document stands in for the consent that is missing. Borang JPJK3A replaces JPJK3, only the new owner attends for biometrics, and the general conditions — no restriction on the transaction, inspection passed except for motorcycles, commercial permit cancelled — still apply.

Repossession. For a vehicle repossessed under the Hire-Purchase Act 1967, JPJ asks for a copy of the Notis Tuntutan Penamaan (Schedule 5) and a copy of the Notis Niat Pengambilalihan Kenderaan (Schedule 4) — the same two notices section 16 requires. For a repossession not under that Act, a copy of the repossession notice issued under the agreement.

The registered owner has died. One of six documents: a High Court order, a Grant of Probate, a Letter of Administration, a distribution order under the Small Estates (Distribution) Act 1955 certified by JKPTG, an AmanahRaya distribution instruction letter, or a Faraid order certified by the Syariah Court. Where a Faraid order does not name who takes the vehicle, a statutory declaration from the beneficiaries about the renunciation goes with it, made before a government-serving Commissioner for Oaths, a Magistrate or a Judge. Sabah has its own two: a certified Native Court Schedule Three, or a Form C order certified by the Sabah Lands and Surveys office. Which of those routes applies is the subject of a separate guide on how an estate is distributed in Malaysia.

Total loss or Beyond Economic Repair. Where an insurer has written the vehicle off as stolen, BER or total loss, JPJ asks for copies of the claim offer letter, proof that compensation was paid, proof that it was received, and the Discharge and Indemnity form. What leads up to that point — the police report, the claim, the assessment — is covered in this site’s guide to making a car accident claim.

Forfeiture, and an owner who cannot be found. For a vehicle forfeited to a government agency, a certified copy of the forfeiture order from the court that made it. Where the registered owner cannot be contacted or traced, a court order — there is no administrative substitute. Section 13(2) covers the related case where the certificate itself is withheld: the person in possession applies, and where the Director is satisfied it was not delivered and that person is entitled to possession, the Director may on payment of the prescribed fee issue a duplicate. Whether any of these routes fits a particular situation is a question for the agency or a licensed professional, not for a checklist — the value of the list is that it tells you which document to go and get first.

Walaoeh Verdict

The single most useful thing on this page is that this errand has two prices and only one of them is published. The inspection is RM 30.00 at PUSPAKOM and RM 30 in the gazette — the same figure twice, which makes it easy to check. The JPJ transfer fee is not published as an amount anywhere reachable: the guides say the fee is paid as prescribed, and JPJ’s own fee page carries new registration only. Ask at the counter, and treat any number you were quoted by anyone else as unverified.

The second is that the deadlines are shorter than the mood of a used-car sale. Section 13 gives both sides 7 days and tells you not to use the vehicle beyond 7 days unless the new owner is registered. The inspection report lasts 60 days. If the transfer went through online, the seller has 2 working days to get the cancelled road tax disc and the original receipt to JPJ or the rebate conversation gets harder. None of those are the kind of thing a counter reminds you about afterwards.

The third saves the most wasted morning. Check condition 4 before both parties commit to a date — a finance company’s ownership claim, an unsettled Customs record or a blacklist record will stop the transaction at the counter, and a hire-purchase car needs the financier’s consent under section 12 before any of this starts — consent the financier cannot unreasonably withhold. Bring the VOC, bring MyKad, and expect both of you to be there in person if the car is individually owned. Where the money or the deadline matters, confirm the current position with JPJ or the inspection centre before relying on it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources

Every figure above comes from one of these, all checked on 19 September 2026.

• JPJ — Panduan Pertukaran Milikan Kenderaan Motor Secara Sukarela and the guide for transfers other than voluntary. Both in Malay.
• JPJ — Soalan Lazim Kenderaan, the forms page carrying Borang JPJK3 and JPJK3A, and the client charter.
• JPJ — the LKM cancellation and refund procedure, the duplicate registration certificate page, and Kadar Bayaran Pelesenan Kenderaan, which carries new registration fees only.
• PUSPAKOM — Inspection Types & Fees, Inspection Guides, the FAQ, Appointment and Branches. The per-inspection-type pages PUSPAKOM used to publish now return a not-found error; these are the current ones.
• Laws of Malaysia, Act 333 — Road Transport Act 1987, hosted by the Ministry of Transport. Sections 12, 13, 15, 19, 90, 102 and 119.
• Laws of Malaysia — P.U. (A) 7/2016, the Road Transport (Fees for Inspection of Motor Vehicles Services) Rules 2016 and its fee Schedule.
• Laws of Malaysia, Act 212 — Hire-Purchase Act 1967, sections 4G, 12 and 16. The reprint states on its cover that it is as at 1 March 2013.