lkn

You can actually pay using PromptPay in the food courts I have visited (i.e. the QR code payment that deducts money from your bank account), I also believe they have supported various digital wallets like LINE Pay, and the Rabbit card (at least when I got my Rabbit card some ten years ago, I was told that it could be used in some food courts). But I don’t think your definition of “cashless” is quite what people normally think of when saying cashless. Cashless means that you do not give physical cash to the vendor when paying for goods and services. It doesn’t matter if the digital wallet or plastic card used for the payment is connected to your bank account or has been prepaid / topped up beforehand. As of such, my Thai bank account is really just a “prepaid wallet” that was topped up with Wise… oh… and my Wise debit card, is that cashless when I use it? Because I regularly have to top up my Wise account as well…

The question was “why would any vendor not accept cash”, and the answer is that for people serving food, there is a hygienic reason to not touch potentially dirty cash, and therefore many Thai food courts are literally cashless. Yes, you can buy a prepaid card with cash, but you can also buy a prepaid VISA or MasterCard with cash, or maybe a gift card, so by that logic, it’s hard to find something truly cashless. But my point remains the same, there are good reasons for some vendors to refuse cash that the customer should also appreciate.

I did not say that. Seriously, you guys seem to just want to argue about everything.

And most likely, many of these vendors “who do not pay tax” do pay all sorts of other “fees” to the local authorities, that would far exceed their actual tax burden. Truly a messed up system.

Sorry, it was @Lorry that made that claim, where I asked for a source, and you replied, so I confused the two of you.

You claimed that »They [“big brother”] are working hard on it [seeing all our transactions].« Can you provide some sources for this? If not, it is conspiracy terretory.

You don’t pay tax on the first 150,000 baht, and only 5% on the next 150,000 baht, so probably most traders don’t need to pay tax, or need to pay so little, that it is not worth pursuing. Furthermore, I have transferred > 150,000 baht/year to a handful of different people, so just because this amount has been received in a bank account, does not mean it is taxable. Most older people in Thailand receive regular payments from their children, grandchildren, or nieces/nephews, and that actually is often done as electronic payments, though sometimes through a third party. I doubt Thailand has the expertise to make sense of the data, if they actually did get access to all bank transactions.

Then it is a bad implementation. Have you tried to use a Rabbit Card with the BTS system in Bangkok? Japan has the same, but with the card on your phone, and it is just as fast, if not faster (because their doors are open by default, so you don’t have to wait for doors to open, only if your card is invalid, does the door close) — and you just put your phone above the sensor, no need to activate anything on your phone first. Imagine you had to stop in order to put coins in the metro gates, it would be bonkers, so don’t claim digital payment is slower than cash, just because there are bad implementations of digital payments out there.

There are a zillion different solutions all with different cost structure, benefits, volume discounts, so no single answer. The nice thing about the QR code is that even the grandmother selling bananas at the market can just get a QR code from their bank and start accepting digital payments free of charge and with no technology (on her part) involved. Only downside is that she doesn’t do proper verification of the payments, but who would cheat an old grandmother out of 20 baht by photoshopping fake confirmation screens? And on that note, even a non-tech savvy grandmother may prefer accepting payments electronically, because leaving the market with a lot of cash does make a lot of people worry. In my own country, bus and taxi drivers were the first to get rid of cash, because they are easy victims. In Thailand it used to be that the bank would provide a business with a terminal free of charge, and that terminal would accept the bank’s debit cards free of charge, but have a fee for cards from other banks. That is why you see some shops have a dozen terminals, because they want to avoid the fee. But I don’t know what the situation is today. I would almost assume that the banks have stepped out of the business of providing their own terminals, because debit cards never caught on in Thailand, and small vendors will just use PromptPay. Larger vendors will invest in a terminal that accept many different payment types, for this, they will of course pay something, but I am quite sure that it is still cheaper than the cost of dealing with cash. And the cost of a payment terminal is only getting lower, as today, all you really need is a phone with an NFC chip to accept payment cards. Also, I worked in a grocery store myself when I was younger, I don’t think you are aware of just how much overhead there is in counting cash at closing time, and carrying cash not just to and from the bank, but also to and from the store’s safety box. Not to mention that it’s much easier to give incorrect change with cash, although I have seen some modern stores today has a cash dispenser, so the cashier only have to type in the amount received, though such machine can’t be cheap either!

The staff is the “man in the middle” (between the customer and the shop owner). We couldn’t even sell bottled water in my condo without this “man in the middle” (staff) pocketing some of the money. That is why I introduced a cashless payment system in our building, and since then, we are no longer losing money selling bottled water. Yes, in theory, someone can swap all the stores QR codes, but in practice, you are much more likely to have staff pocket money or just give back incorrect change. Also, if you actually do manage to swap all the stores QR codes, how long until they find out, and police comes knocking at your door, as the new QR code will point to your bank account… you are just being silly here!

Who is working on what exactly? Do you have any idea about the complexity of tracking all transactions across all payment rails? Yes, governments would prefer us all to use digital payment systems, there are policy papers on this, highlighting all the advantages, and yes, cracking down on money laundering, tax evasion, and sending money to sanctioned groups, are among the many reasons, but this is not done by reporting all transactions to the government, instead each financial institution that accept money is tasked with doing the necessary KYC/AML procedures. And as for the advantages, in EU a motivating factor has been to make payment easier and cheaper for both consumer and vendor, and thereby increase commercial activity (which leads to more jobs). They even publish the numbers for the studies they have performed. But I guess for you, it’s all just one giant conspiracy…

Have you been to a food court in Thailand? They have been cashless for a decade or more. This is probably about hygiene, you don’t want the person handling your food to also touch dirty cash. In Taiwan I actually saw one shop that had a bowl with coins and instructed customers to “help themselves” (to change) when paying, as he did not want to touch these coins.

In theory, yes, the “authorities” could map out your income and expenses, in practice though it can get very complicated. For example in Thailand, I have 3 different bank accounts, and I also use both my Wise and Revolut cards (which Thai authorities can’t just subpoena to get bank statements). So you have to collect statement from at least five entities, and adding to that, the actual bank statements in Thailand are absolutely terrible! Many of my payments are just “Debit Card Spending” or it will be a payment to 2C2P, ร้านถุงเงิน, or to the shopping mall group (a lot of vendors in a mall apparently use payment infrastructure provided by the mall). So yeah… in theory going 100% electronic, big brother can see all your expenses, but in practice the tech does not seem to be there.

I think this is a US-specific problem, “over there” credit card companies don’t like to have ways for consumers to get their credit converted into cash, because the consumer gets cashback for each transaction, so if the consumer finds a way to spend money and convert the “product” back into the same amount that was spent (e.g. buying dollar coins from the mint with credit card, buying gift cards, etc.) then they can do an arbitrage scheme where they are getting money from nothing. I looked at one credit card company in Europe, and one of the advantages was free currency exchange and unlimited ATM withdrawals. So clearly this company is not concerned about this arbitrage scheme, as they do not give cashback. I have a few banking services (e.g. Revolut) where I can add a card (from another bank) and then simply “top up” my account with the card that was added. I don’t know if this is just because we have much lower interchange fees in Europe, so Revolut (and others) are willing to pay the fee, or if there actually is a way to get money from a card without a transaction fee. For example, if I use my card to buy groceries, my card issuer earns a transaction fee (from the grocery shop). But if I withdraw cash from an ATM, my card issuer pays a fee to the ATM operator. So there are different transaction types with different fee structures.

The law is there because the market was unfair for the merchants. The merchant is not allowed to charge the fee to the consumer, so most consumers do not know about the payment card fee that the merchant has to pay, and definitely do not care. On the contrary, if the consumer can pick between paying with a card that has 0% cashback or 3% cashback, guess what card they will use? But this cashback is taken directly from the merchant, which probably has to pay >5% for this transaction, compared to 0% had the consumer paid with cash, but VISA/MasterCard have crafted their agreements so that merchant must sell at same price, regardless of payment method. And now that payment cards are ubiquitous, VISA and MasterCard can just raise their interchange fees as they like, because there is effectively no competition, and the consumer won’t care. Only merchants gets squeezed. So that is why we had to pass this law. Personally though, I think it would have been better if the interchange fee was paid by the consumer, because then the consumer would suddenly have an interest in finding the card with the lowest (total) fees, and there would then be real competition between the various payment card providers in lowering their fees. That is how capitalism is supposed to work!

Using wallet app in other countries for public transport works fine, see e.g. Transport for London. I think it is just yet another stupid policy move, like 7-Eleven not accepting PromptPay or Thai debit cards (except UOB).

It makes it simpler, because you can have most of your cards always with you on the phone (a shame that Thai banks do not support ApplePay, likewise with Rabbit or the MRT card). You can often also add your boarding pass, tickets, and other things to your “wallet app”, for example in Japan you can also add a travel card to your wallet app, top it up via the wallet app, and then just tap your phone when using public transport. They even have an “express mode” so you won’t have to activate your phone first, just put it near the sensor, and you’re done. For payment cards though, the main advantage, apart from not having to bring the proper physical card with you is, that it never asks for PIN. A regular contactless payment card will ask for PIN either when amount is above a certain threshold, or if you haven’t used the PIN in a while.

They do accept debit cards, just not from Thai banks, with the exception of UOB.

The problem is not cashless per se, it’s how they go about it. There is nothing preventing BOT / TAT from doing a “Thai payment app” where you add your debit/credit card, and then it allows you to scan QR codes with the funds being taken from your payment card. The problem is that if you are American, there will be a 3-5% fee for taking the funds from your payment card, and I believe to get a payment agreement with VISA/MasterCard, they have made it so that this fee must not be charged to the owner of the card. This is of course what is f’ed up — in Europe we have introduced legislation that cap the payment card interchange fees to 0.11% for debit cards and 0.13% for credit cards. This means that in many European countries you can use your payment card everywhere, and I really mean everywhere!

I am from a country with such law, we introduced it forty years ago or so, after the introduction of the first payment card which made some people worry they would soon be unable to pay with their cash. But today we have amended the law, because cash can be a problem in many situations, for example self-service kiosks etc. do not need to accept cash, nor do businesses after (I think) around 22:00, and businesses in “remote areas” (for example a gas station) can apply for an exemption. Furthermore, today it is actually illegal for a business to accept payment in cash if it is above a certain threshold (about 100,000 baht), though this has to do with AML and therefore not really comparable to the other amendments (which is more about security or practicality). Though my point simply is, some countries do have these laws, but they are from another time, and are likely to change, so I don’t see such law being introduced today (in Thailand, or anywhere else).

They have a minimum purchase requirement when paying with card (wallet app). They waived the fee during COVID, but unfortunately re-instated it about a year ago. But Family Mart, BigC / BigC Mini, TOPS, etc. all take cards / NFC / wallet apps w/o minimum payments. So does most shops at the mall, Central Department Store, Robinson, and larger restaurants. You can almost assume that if the place take VISA/MasterCard, they have a reader that does NFC and thus also support GooglePay and the other wallet apps.

I was asked whether it was a requirement that funds only be sent to accounts abroad bearing the sender’s name, i.e. repatriating funds rather than paying a 3rd party abroad. Though having now looked again at their interface and terms, I see no requirement that funds only be sent to yourself, and it might also be difficult for them to enforce. Anyway, for your case, sending money to yourself, as long as it is less than 1.5M baht and in one of their 38 supported currencies, it should work fine.

It is in my name, and the process (adding it via iBanking) did require manual approval, so it wouldn’t surprise me, if they only allow accounts in your own name by default. I btw noticed while checking my iBanking that the 1.5M baht limit is explicitly mentioned. I can’t get to the “Add New Account” screen at the moment (to see if there are any requirements mentioned), as apparently this functionality is only available within office hours on bank days.

You need a phone with a selfie camera. I think you are conflating the phone’s biometrics with the new face scan requirements. For the bank’s face scan, you need to have previously visited the branch, where they will take your photo, and when you use the app, they compare the live video from your selfie camera with the photo on record. It may even give you instructions such as “smile and show teeth” or “blink 3 times”. How easily the recognition can be fooled, I do not know, but it should prevent someone who obtains your phone + passcode to empty your accounts.