xebozone

Thanks! Appreciate your reply! So, both the validity and period of stay would be 90 days. Hopefully eVisa can be more clear about this in the future. That makes more sense especially in terms of logistics. Thanks again

Hello. I'm making plans to stay long term in Thailand with my Thai Wife. We currently live abroad. The eVisa website says the validity is for 90 days for a non-o family visa however I cannot find a clear answer online whether this 90 day stay period starts from the date of issuance of the visa or the date of entry. I asked my consulate via email and they just told me they recommend I apply 1 month before I intend to arrive and sent me a link to the eVisa site. Not helpful. Given that to convert to a 1 year marriage visa one needs to show a bank balance in Thailand for at least 2 months, and then needing to apply for the conversion at least 3 to 4 weeks before the 90 day visa expires this makes arriving in Thailand and opening a bank account of utmost urgency. If I apply for the visa and then arrive a month later, then I've shot myself in the foot as this would be impossible if the 90 days starts from the date of issuance rather than the date of entry. Can someone give me a certain answer, as organising logistics of the move is very difficult without knowing what date I should apply for the visa and arrive. Appreciate your time. Thanks!

Lol. Thanks for your responses. In contrast, the bank in my country is much more lenient for overseas users, and when I stayed in Thailand allowed me to set my SMS number to an overseas number (after calling and proving my identity through various checks). I suppose now we need to find a SIM card that will allow roaming and top-up online if that's the only way. Thanks again.

My wife has an account with Kasikorn and is living with me outside Thailand with no access to her Thai phone number (we changed phones and lost the old sim, but still had access to the original phone that mobile banking was set up on, so it still allowed access). We set up mobile banking and it worked fine for years, but one day, the app required an update to be installed or it would not let us login. After that update was installed it required us to set up mobile banking again. The only way to do this is at an ATM. We called Kasikorn and they said they couldn't help us, nor reset her internet banking password, as we need to go to a branch or have access to the same phone number and get an SMS, so now we have no access to any money. Because of the COVID pandemic, we couldn't travel back to Thailand, so we have lost access to this money for the past 2 years. You would think that calling and providing all sorts of personal verification details to the support person over the phone would allow some access, but this isn't the case. They can't do anything without coming into a branch! Also, last time we were in Thailand, we went to a Kasikorn branch and requested that we be given access to internet banking and they didn't know how to do this for us. We spent hours there with the staff making several phone calls to other branch managers and got nowhere. All of the above has soured our experience with Kasikorn. We will be going back to Thailand soon with the borders finally opening up and would like to open an account with a bank that has good mobile and internet banking that we will be able to properly manage overseas without having access to a phone number (or a decent support system that will allow us to change this number to an international number over the phone if any SMS verification was needed). The requirement to go to a branch and have access to a phone number in Thailand to access internet banking is unreliable if living outside Thailand as anything can happen to a phone or sim. What bank do you recommend that will allow reliable overseas access, preferably with the ability to change the verification to an overseas number (after providing enough verification details)?