Thailand Bank Account

[Guest]

Good info, I may be moving there next year.

[Guest]

Wait, wait, wait.

Siam Commercial Bank is the bank that gave my 2 friends the hassle on taking money out AND just exchanging to USD.
They both claimed Bangkok Bank is much more relaxed. Also, if you're crazy enough, Bangkok Bank (in Singapore) is the only bank that will give a foreigner a mortgage in Thailand to buy a house.

I have an account with them and Kasikornbank. Both are what I would call quite backward in their systems. For example, I cannot set up a regular monthly transfer of money to pay my rent. Both require you to be in person for most transactions (like wire payments), both have virtually no English speakers, both have unbelievably bad queuing policies in all their banks.

Honestly, I have 2 Thai bank accounts, and with all the crap I hear about people having trouble in the movement of money even within the country and trivial stuff like just exchanging USD, I am looking at moving to a foreign bank with international policies, like CITIBANK or HSBC.

If I were you, I would go Bangkok Bank or foreign bank.

[moe666]

Ziggy, I am actually leaning toward HSBC in Thailand. I havn't looked into citibank yet. What my majo concern is the cost of transfering funds from the US to Thailand a little bit each time adds up. It"s a cost that delets your cash one cut at a time.

[divertwo]

..I believe Bank One(in the US) has no fees....do a Google search and you'll get up to date info

[Snick]

HSBC Thailand has one branch, is geared towards commercial use and is staffed by unhelpful incompetents. I can't think of a worse bank to use in Thailand

HSBC Hong Kong is great, but the Thai division sucks.

[SamplerDoc]

  Great To Know, Since That is Who I went With for My Asia Trips and Easy Money Access  

Well...........Time will Tell  

[moe666]

How about the Bank of Asia I read some positive thing a few years ago on another site.

[TTChang]

(moe666 @ Jan. 31 2007,07:12) Since I will be retireing in about a year and moving to LOS - I think I need to set up a bank account. Does anyone have a recomendation for a bank and will they let me set it up before I move there.
 

There are several threads about opening a Bank Account in Thailand.   Hopefully my experience this weekend in Pattaya will give guys some greater confidence.

My starting point was to choose a Bank, based on the best I have used up to now for Currency Exchange in LOS.  The two banks that stood out for me were the Siam Commercial Bank (for their professionalism) and Kasikorn Bank (for the helpfulness of their staff).  Both have good coverage.  I wanted a convenient branch - although with ATM and Internet usage, that wasn't really an issue.

What I didnt want was to sit in a busy Bangkok branch, waiting for a bureaucrat to tell me (after an hour or so) to go away   .  Some of the queues in LOS make UK banks seem like switched-on  customer-friendly businesses  .... any of you old enough to remember that?   (OK, they were never switched-on!)

So I decided to open an account at a small branch near my hotel in Pattaya.   Instead of near my rented home in BKK.  And I struck gold.  10/10 for customer service, goes to the Kasikorn Bank, The Avenue Sub Branch, Second Road (in the new shopping mall).

[TTChang]

View of branch .... Soi 13 is in the background, on the opposite side of Second Road

[TTChang]

The only query I received was why I was opening an account in Pattaya, not near my home address in Bangkok.... Easily answered by my compliments about their friendliness and service standards.     The CSO checked my passport (which has a one-year visa .... that may be signifcant)   He took my opening deposit, confirmed I wanted a savings account with ATM card, and I signed the account opening form.

 .... 20 minutes later, everything was set up. One of the staff went with me to set up my PIN change at the ATM.  A couple of queries on my Internet Access the following day, immediately sorted out by the call centre (they speak English !!)

This branch only opened a few months ago, as part of the new Avenue shopping mall, and it may well be that they have hand-picked the staff.  But as things stand, it has TTC's unreserved recommendation.   First impressions of the Internet Banking is also very positive (English version of everything).  My home page also includes exchange rates (as many as I select, and updated daily).

The savings rate is meagre at 0.75% (2% for fixed term deposits), but my main concern at present is to convert some of my UK savings into the Thai Bahts that I now need for most of my spending.

OK, I am making   my base, I have a Non-Immigrant Visa (not yet a Retirement one), and have a local address (not just a hotel).  I didn't try to discover whether regular tourist visitors would get similar treatment.  

The real point of this post is to balance some of the previous comments, where opening a Thai Bank Account has been described as an agonising and sometimes fruitless exercise.

[rossco]

Opening a Thai bank account
Easy to do - need passport and an address in Thailand (I used my hotel address originally and ten changed it when I had a more permanent place).
Can open an account with as little as 200 Baht
Annual fee for the Debit card (you cannot go overdrawn) - 150 Baht from memory at my bank

Why have a Thai account? My answers are based on a Retirement Visa ONLY. Not a work permit.

It is easy to set up and you can only put in deposit only what you need.
For a retirement visa (50+) you must show an income (pension) of 65,000 per month or deposit 800,000 baht.
You need to "show" the 800,000 baht on deposit (400,000 if married to a Thai national) for an annual retirement visa.
This 800,000 must be in the bank for 90 days prior to visa application.
Once visa issued you may use this money as spending money - just repeat the exercise each year.
(800,000/12 approximates to the 65,000 per month income)

Generally if you transfer your local currency to a Thai bank, in your local currency, you get a better rate of exchange, in Thailand, when the transfer arrives.

Personal experience says this is the best way to bring money in. The Forex dealers in your own country give an inferior rate. An example:

Euros into Thailand converted in Euroland - 42 baht = 1 euro. Transferring Euros into the Thai bank the rate was 49.

Having a Thai account also means you can manage how much money you hold in Thailand - exchange rates can vary throughout the year.

Hope that helps

Most banks normally do not pay interest to non Thais/non-residents.