How to open a Thai bank account for foreigners

My visit to The Kasikorn Bank in Pattaya was interesting to say the least in an attempt to open a Thai account for an Englishman

I took my Thai partner with me in case they would ask questions I didn’t understand but, surprisingly it went very smoothly, far easier than opening a bank account in the UK.

I took my passport and a residence certificate from immigration with me, but what I didn’t realise until I had got there was, that they also require a minimum of 10,000 baht to deposit into the account at the time you open it (you can withdraw the money straight away afterwards).

I had a tourist visa at the time of opening the bank account.

Both my partner and myself were invited to take a seat by a very courteous young man who spoke very good English.

He took my passport, residence details and photocopied them, and gave them me back, took my 10,000 baht and gave me a receipt, asked me for my mobile phone number and email address and asked me to sign three or four prices of paper together.

He went away, and only after a few minutes, came back with a brand new up to date Savings and Deposit Passbook, he went away again and within a very few minutes came back with our Plastic Debit Cards for both my partner and myself ( something that in England can take up to 10 days, in separate envelopes and PINS etc )

I was given a concealed key pad that only I could see, my card was inserted and I was invited to key in a PIN number of my choice.

We were then invited to receive SMS messages on each other’s phone to tell us when any money was deposited in the bank or any money was withdrawn from the bank account, this is purely a matter of choice and is NOT compulsory but there is a yearly charge of around 600 baht for that service, I agreed as I thought it very useful.

I received an email message with a code, to enable me to do do on-line banking, I was then advised once I had logged on to change that code to something memorable to me immediately, which I duly did

That was it, very smooth, the whole thing took about 30 minutes……….but he wasn’t finished!!

He then got up, invited us to follow him, took us outside to an ATM machine and proceeded to show both of us how to use the ATM, me because I was English and could not speak Thai, but showed me how to change the language etc etc, my partner had a pretty good idea, but he also showed us how to deposit money, update our pass book, statements etc etc ( the sort of thing that is quite common in England……yeah right!!! )

Kind regards

John M

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