TylerBKK

Typically, a 12 month bank statement is what's required to ensure you maintained at least an 800K balance for the 3 months immediately following the date that your previous extension was issued, that your balance did not fall under 400K for the next 7 months after that, and that your balance was back up to 800K for the two months prior to today. I'm actually a bit surprised they even accepted the 3 month statement. Anyway, if you had provided a 12 month statement to the IO with all your other documents (same cost as a 3 month statement at most banks) then you probably wouldn't have run into this issue of them wanting to see the old bankbook. Also, it sounds like you might be using the same bank account for maintaining your 800K as you do for your regular expenditures, just based on the fact that the bankbook filled up. Many people often have two separate accounts at the same bank, one used for visa purposes, and the other one just for daily spending. Keeping the funds in separate accounts helps reduce the number of entries that will appear in the 800K account and the book from filling up, but also helps prevent ever accidentally going below the 800K requirement from any daily expenditures made from the account.

Your welcome. Wishing you all the best in processing your family visa and hope all goes smoothly and quickly with it. 👍🏻

Is the funds needing to come from abroad just a CM thing? AFAIR, when I did my O retirement at CW many years ago, I entered on visa exempt, but my funds were already in Thailand since I worked for a long time in Thailand, saved some money locally, and then retired. Many foreigners who work for a long time in Thailand, and then retire, could be in a position where they don't really have any funds saved abroad. So I was surprised when I read in this thread that the funds need to come from abroad for a O retirement visa.

It has all been covered above already. Cannot convert B visa to O visa in Thailand. Must leave country after visa and work permit are cancelled. Easiest thing is fly to Singapore or Malaysia and return to Thailand on same day. Reenter Thailand on 30 day visa exempt. Then start the process of applying for O visa within 14 days after returning to Thailand. You will get a 90 day O visa from immigration to begin with and then can extend it to one year. Read the 3 page link posted above (4th post from the top). Post is from 2017 and read all replies containing the responses from Ubonjoe. That will give you all the steps you need to follow and in detail.

That’s good information. I think your post will be more useful for him because my posts were based on retirement visa and your post is based on marriage to a Thai citizen, which is what he needs.

I just found the information below posted by JackThompson on the second page in the topic I linked above. This confirms my point about needing to apply for the 90 day visa within 2 weeks after arrival back in Thailand on the 30 day exempt visa because they wont give the 90 day extension for some reason if you have less than 15 days left on your 30 day exempt visa apparently. I don't know if this has changed though or not since when this post was made in 2017. Also, if you are not in Bangkok you might even have less time to apply. I don't know how this is all going to fit in with your need to wait another 30 days first.

I think the best thing to do (from memory) is to go to immigration within the first 2 weeks after entering Thailand on the 30 day visa exempt and then apply for the 90 day visa extension on the basis of an O visa. I think maybe there was an issue (with waiting longer than 2 weeks into the 30 day period after you arrive on the visa exempt to apply) but I can't remember exactly what it was. But the sooner you apply for the 90 day O visa extension after arrival the better I think. I am not sure about extending the 30 day visa exempt though for another 30 days before applying for the 90 day O visa extension. Ubonjoe was really the best person for all of these fine details, but unfortunately he is no longer with us. I was also on various B visas in the past, but I think the last one I was on before I switched to the O visa was for about 5-6 years. After some digging through some old Ubonjoe posts, I found an old 3 page discussion from 2017 which may cover some of the details you are wondering about. I would suggest reading Ubonjoe's replies in the discussion linked below and maybe it can answer some more of your questions:

Understood. Then no need to change anything. Sorry, I thought you were in Bangkok and that you planned to stay in Thailand a longer time. Hopefully they will accept your screenshot again next year. But if you can get a letter in the future from UOB in Korat to confirm your FCA balance that might be better. Best wishes.

Personally, I am not a fan of KBank because of their low credit rating and I prefer only making one visit to the bank and on the same day that I go to immigration. But, again, to each his own. 👍🏼

Hi. This thread is really about retirement visas. Not about family visas. Thus, it might be better for you to start a new topic about your family visa situation so that people don't get confused. Personally, I don't know the answer to your question or I would have given you an answer. Sorry.

Yes, FCA can be tricky as you experienced. I like UOB a lot but the fact that the statements are monthly only on an FCA, that there is no bank book, and because they only do the letter at the head office branch, I decided it was too much headache for me. Your experience with immigration accepting a screen shot of your online banking is great, but there is also no guarantee that they will accept that again in the future. The main reason I was using an FCA before was because the Thai Baht was very strong and I didn't want to convert a lot of dollars into Baht at a low exchange rate at that time. But when the Baht hit 35 to the dollar I changed it all over to Thai baht and got rid of the FCA. FCA can also be a problem if you aren't keeping more than an equivalent of approximately ฿800,000 in the FCD account. The issue is, if the Baht strengthens a lot in the future, one could suddenly find that they don't meet the requirements anymore of having ฿800,000 equivalent in the account, which could then be a much bigger problem. If I were in your situation right now, I would probably convert some of the FCA money into ฿800,000 and put that in a regular Thai Baht savings account with UOB. The exchange rates are also still very good right now. Then, when you extend your visa in the future, you can just go to any UOB branch and get your letter, your account book updated, and a 12 month statement done immediately with no problems. UOB does not have a Branch at CW, but they do have a Branch on CW Road close to the Don Muang highway CW Road intersection that you could use if you want to use a UOB branch close to CW immigration.

Sorry, I don't know all the answers to all your questions. But what I can tell you is that when I was on a B visa with work permit that I was told I couldn't converted to an O visa when I retired. So I left the country, flew to KL and flew back to Thailand the same day. I came back in on the visa exempt 30 day, then I applied for the O visa at immigration within two weeks of entering in on the visa exempt. Then immigration gave me either a 60 or 90 extension (can't remember exactly what it was) and they processed my O visa application. No problem at all that I was on a B visa before, exited and recentered on a visa exempt 30 day and then applied for the O. Hope that helps.

At the time I was looking for an alternative bank to UOB for a foreign currency deposit account. I already had a Thai Baht account at SCB so it was easy for me to just move it there. And since SCB provides a bank book with an FCD account, it was a big incentive for me. I think some banks also wouldn't open an FCD account for a foreigner at that time unless they had a work permit. In the end though I found FCD accounts to be a hassle in general. The only way to easily update the bank book for an FCD account is to do a small withdrawal of your foreign currency into Baht. At least with Thai Baht account you can transfer 50 Baht in from another Thai Baht account via a mobile app and then just update the book very easily. Now that you can book an online queue for an appointment time at immigration, it also doesn't matter to me so much if there is a branch of the bank at CW or not. As long as you have an afternoon appointment time, you can go to your local bank branch in the morning, get all your paperwork, then go to CW in the afternoon, and you will not have to wait very long to renew you visa extension. To be honest, I've found many of the banks have their pros and cons. Bangkok Bank has a branch at CW, but they have that issue with taking 3-4 days to issue a 12 month statement, which makes them much less desirable for using with a retirement visa, even though they have a branch at CW. If you really want a bank with a branch at CW then Krungsri or KBank are probably your best options. KBank had their credit rating downgraded though by S&P in 2022. But as I said, with having the online appointment queuing system now available for immigration, I don't feel that it's critical for me to choose a bank with a branch at CW anymore.

I used to have an FCD (foreign currency deposit) account at UOB before too. It was always a challenge to satisfy immigration requirements because they didn't provide me with a bank book for that account. And only the head office branch of UOB was able to give me the letter I needed to verify the account balance on the account. So I used to go to the head office in the morning (before going to immigration) to get the 12 monthly statements printed out by the bank and the letter. It would take them 1.5 to 2 hours to do everything. By the time I got to immigration it was already lunch time. I would then get a queue number at 1:00 and I didn't finish at immigration until 4:30. It was a whole day used up. And then I still had problems sometimes with immigration because there was no bank book with the account. Also, my FCD account balance didn't show in the UOB mobile internet banking app at that time. But that's changed now with UOB it sounds like from what you said. Eventually I moved the funds to SCB though. They give you a bank book with foreign currency deposit accounts. They can also print a 12 month statement for you at any SCB branch. So that made things much easier for me. So with SCB (on an FCD account) you can get the letter, the 12 month statement, and get the bank book all updated at any SCB branch, just like a normal Thai Baht account. So using SCB made things much easier than using UOB. So I would get everything done at my local SCB branch in the morning and then go out to CW. Now I'm no longer using an FCD account and I have a regular Thai Baht account for the 800K Baht, but for using an FCD account for immigration purposes I found that SCB was much easier than using UOB.

Excellent news. Glad to hear it went so smoothly. Now you have another year to relax and not worry about it.