Using ATM

[Grumpy one]

In 11 years of living here, yesterday was the first time I have had to use my Australian ATM card.

A question was shown Do I want the BKK bank to do the exchange rat.

Would it give a better rate if I answer No?

Thanks for any help on this

[Salerno]

Never accept the bank rate if offered, major rip off.

[CharlieH]

MOVED to Banking forum

[Pib]

Never accept such an offer.....officially it's called a Dynamic Currency Conversion (DCC) transaction which means your are not getting the higher card network exchange rate (i.e., Visa/Mastercard) but the ATM owner's rate which is usually around 3% lower than the card network rate. 

 

Read the ATM wording closely and choose the selection that bypasses that DCC offer....the selection saying no to their offer....choose the selection that you want the card-network rate.   The wording can be vague/misreading in which one to select as the ATM owner is hoping you accept their DCC offer which makes them a cool approx 3% indirect fee at your expense.

[Grumpy one]

6 minutes ago, Pib said:

Never accept such an offer.....officially it's called a Dynamic Currency Conversion (DCC) transaction which means your are not getting the higher card network exchange rate (i.e., Visa/Mastercard) but the ATM owner's rate which is usually around 3% lower than the card network rate. 

 

Read the ATM wording closely and choose the selection that bypasses that DCC offer....the selection saying no to their offer....choose the selection that you want the card-network rate.   The wording can be vague/misreading in which one to select as the ATM owner is hoping you accept their DCC offer which makes them a cool approx 3% indirect fee at your expense.

Thanks for that, its good to know.

I usually transfer enough every 6 months. This time I was running low, hence pull out the old card 

[4MyEgo]

18 minutes ago, Grumpy one said:

Thanks for that, its good to know.

I usually transfer enough every 6 months. This time I was running low, hence pull out the old card 

Have a look at Transferwise, I transfer money from my Oz account which goes into their Oz account than comes to my Thai account with no charges by the bank here as it's a transfer in.

 

Transferwise do charge a fee, but give a good rate of exchange, and money is usually in within 24 hours, unless its a weekend or a public holiday.

 

Currently 20.89 baht for a $ or 20.75 baht after the fee is taken out.

 

Check it out: https://transferwise.com/

Edited May 5, 2020 by 4MyEgo

[dwagner]

The Thai bank ATM will usually show what "their" exchange is - decline theirs but note the amount. Then pull your money out and look at your bank debit transaction and do the currency conversion. You will note a much better rate. On Baht 10,000 - that can be more than the Baht 220 the Thai Bank charges just to use their ATM.

 

Also - do not use the "Quick Cash" option - you will get the bank's lower currency rate. I did this yesterday at a Bangkok Bank ATM. I hit the Quick Cash Baht 10,000 and was it showed up on my USA Bank as a USD $315.14 debit or Baht 31.73.

 

Shortly thereafter, I am in Tesco, I buy Baht 10,196 worth of stuff and used the same USA Bank card and it cost me USD $313.92 or Baht 32.48.

 

So the "Quick Cash" option cost me an additional USD $7.26

[VocalNeal]

Paypal recently charged me 29.xx to pay a guy in Indonesia. 

 

Your $7.26 is getting very/coincidentally close to the 220 Baht ATM charge. Had you have taken out 20,000 it would still be 220 baht!!

Edited May 5, 2020 by VocalNeal

[Pib]

2 hours ago, dwagner said:

The Thai bank ATM will usually show what "their" exchange is - decline theirs but note the amount. Then pull your money out and look at your bank debit transaction and do the currency conversion. You will note a much better rate. On Baht 10,000 - that can be more than the Baht 220 the Thai Bank charges just to use their ATM.

 

Also - do not use the "Quick Cash" option - you will get the bank's lower currency rate. I did this yesterday at a Bangkok Bank ATM. I hit the Quick Cash Baht 10,000 and was it showed up on my USA Bank as a USD $315.14 debit or Baht 31.73.

 

Shortly thereafter, I am in Tesco, I buy Baht 10,196 worth of stuff and used the same USA Bank card and it cost me USD $313.92 or Baht 32.48.

 

So the "Quick Cash" option cost me an additional USD $7.26

I seriously, seriously doubt the quick cash gave you a lower exchange rate.  If the Bt220 fee was included in the charge hitting your bank acct resulting in Bt10,220 baht being charged....you got charged $315.14 resulting in a 32.43 exchange rate.   A if Bangkok Bank was giving/offering your "their" rate there would have been a DCC type screen showing you the rate and asking if you wanted it or not.

 

And when you are do a purchase the transaction the "initial" exchange is usually slightly different that what is showing on a the Visa/Mastercard exchange rate based on my experience....but when the transaction is settled/posted one or two business days later you will find it matches the official exchange rate for that posting date. 

 

And that 32.48 exchange rate for the purchase is real close to the 32.43 ATM withdrawal rate I calculated above.  But regardless if Bangkok Bank was giving your "their rate....a DCC rate" you would have seen the DCC screen.

 

[Bramley]

Can't speak for your Oz bank, but my HSBC accounts in UK and HK give a far worse rate than Bangkok Bank. So I let BKB do the currency exchange.

[toolpush]

14 hours ago, Bramley said:

Can't speak for your Oz bank, but my HSBC accounts in UK and HK give a far worse rate than Bangkok Bank. So I let BKB do the currency exchange.

Agreed. Bangkok Bank gives me a far better rate receiving USD than my DBS Singapore bank does on sending USD.

[Laza 45]

On 5/5/2020 at 1:30 PM, 4MyEgo said:

Have a look at Transferwise, I transfer money from my Oz account which goes into their Oz account than comes to my Thai account with no charges by the bank here as it's a transfer in.

 

Transferwise do charge a fee, but give a good rate of exchange, and money is usually in within 24 hours, unless its a weekend or a public holiday.

 

Currently 20.89 baht for a $ or 20.75 baht after the fee is taken out.

 

Check it out: https://transferwise.com/

...and with my Oz credit union it shows up as a 'visa purchase'.. no charge for that.. I use Debit card and choose 'for monthly expenses' on Transferwise for quickest and cheapest transfer.. 

[lopburi3]

15 hours ago, Bramley said:

Can't speak for your Oz bank, but my HSBC accounts in UK and HK give a far worse rate than Bangkok Bank. So I let BKB do the currency exchange.

But this is about using a foreign debit/credit card tied to Visa or MasterCard or such which have set exchange, which will always be better than allowing DCC to use a much lower exchange rate.  

[khunjeff]

On 5/5/2020 at 1:05 PM, Pib said:

Never accept such an offer.....officially it's called a Dynamic Currency Conversion (DCC) transaction which means your are not getting the higher card network exchange rate (i.e., Visa/Mastercard) but the ATM owner's rate which is usually around 3% lower than the card network rate. 

I had also thought that DCC was usually a 3-4% ripoff, but in recent months - on TMB ATMs, at least - it's been more like 6-7%. I always withdraw 30k THB at one time, and their "generous" DCC offer has consistently been 60 or 70 USD more expensive than declining the conversion and letting Visa do it. That is an absolutely insane markup, but I'm sure lots of people take it without realizing what they're doing.

Edited May 6, 2020 by khunjeff

[DFPhuket]

The same thing goes when using a foreign credit card. If asked if you want to pay in your currency (e.g., Australian or US$), always decline and say you want the charge in Thai Baht. There can be a substantial savings. 

[mcl2504]

In fact I just did an experiment earlier this week using my Hong Kong card taking money out of my Hong Kong account in THB. I did 2 transactions for the exact same amount but used the no conversion option once and the offered conversion the other time. Using the ATM's offered conversion rate was 5.28% more expensive than using the no conversion option and leaving the conversion to my Hong Kong bank. I suspect this would apply to all currencies, but I only have experience with HKD.

[Pib]

2 hours ago, khunjeff said:

I had also thought that DCC was usually a 3-4% ripoff, but in recent months - on TMB ATMs, at least - it's been more like 6-7%. I always withdraw 30k THB at one time, and their "generous" DCC offer has consistently been 60 or 70 USD more expensive than declining the conversion and letting Visa do it. That is an absolutely insane markup, but I'm sure lots of people take it without realizing what they're doing.

You sure your card issuing bank doesn't charge an approx 3% foreign transaction fee on top of the TMB approx 3% DCC markup which totals up to 6%.  That's many card-issuing banks do is still charge the foreign transaction fee simply because it was a foreign transaction done in "any" currency....doesn't matter that the foreign bank did the conversion....what matters is it was still a transaction done in a foreign country.  End result you get whacked twice...once by the foreign bank doing the DCC and once by your home country bank charging the foreign transaction fee.

[Isaan sailor]

Because of the lousy exchange rates to begin with—I try to keep cash in my home country bank account.  That way, I can make purchases here with my Visa no transfer fee credit card based in my home country.  Tesco Lotus, 7-11, Big C and all big box stores all accept Visa/Mastercard.  And as the previous poster pointed out, always make your purchases in Thai Baht.

For cash, I use TransferWise with the debit card option.  No really good way to bring cash here.

[AgMech Cowboy]

On 5/5/2020 at 10:29 AM, Salerno said:

Never accept the bank rate if offered, major rip off.

When you doing a CC withdraw, you don't have a choice.

 

I had to do a little research after reading a few of the replies.  Even though I used my US credit card in a Bangkok bank ATM recently, I didn't get ask the question that you where. As regards the research: https://www.investopedia.com/dynamic-currency-conversion-dcc-term-4769305

Good Luck next time.

[Pib]

5 minutes ago, AgMech Cowboy said:

When you doing a CC withdraw, you don't have a choice.

 

I had to do a little research after reading a few of the replies.  Even though I used my US credit card in a Bangkok bank ATM recently, I didn't get ask the question that you where. As regards the research: https://www.investopedia.com/dynamic-currency-conversion-dcc-term-4769305

Good Luck next time.

Why to you say that...what reference do you have?   And you sure your credit card doesn't have a foreign transaction fee or cash advance fee applied by your card-issuing bank which you are mistakenly thinking is a DCC charge.  I've seen so many ThaiVisa posts over the years where people are unaware of the foreign transaction or cash advance fee their debit or credit card may carry and then the people blame the Thai bank/ATM/store for charging the extra fee when in fact it's a foreign transaction fee charged by the "card-issuing" bank.

 

I sure know whenever a DCC transaction is attempted at a checkout counter using a credit or debit card using a Point of Service machine, the receipt for signature that prints out for your signature "has both your home country currency and Thai baht reflected on the receipt."  DO NOT sign that receipt because when both currencies are reflected that means it's a DCC transaction.  Have the checkout person cancel that transaction (only takes them a minute or two no matter what they might say) and redo in Thai baht.  The DCC transaction will still hit your card acct but just stays in Pending status and  falls off in a few days as it was cancelled....and the transaction done in baht will hit your acct and finalize in a business day or two or three.   This happens to me about once a year when some cashier's brain is on autopilot and even thought I told the cashier to "Charge Thai Baht; not U.S. Dollars" they still run the transaction as a DCC as their machine is setup by default to do DCC for a foreign card....they must press a button during the transaction saying charge in baht vs another currency to prevent the default DCC transaciton.  Some stores like most HomePro's have their machine setup that way....default to DCC when a foreign card is inserted, but they will gladly charge in baht if telling them so which I always do at places like HomePro and few others....like Pizza Place.

[Pib]

 

From the Visa website regarding merchant requirements when doing DCC transactions.

 

https://usa.visa.com/dam/VCOM/download/merchants/VBS-01-AUG-14-Optimize-Cross-Border-Ecommerce.pdf

[Pib]

 A three year old post that shows an example of a DCC screen on a Thai bank ATM.

 

[Salerno]

30 minutes ago, AgMech Cowboy said:

When you doing a CC withdraw, you don't have a choice.

 

They can't do it without asking; if you aren't given a choice you get the Mastercard/Visa rate.

[khunjeff]

14 hours ago, Pib said:

You sure your card issuing bank doesn't charge an approx 3% foreign transaction fee on top of the TMB approx 3% DCC markup which totals up to 6%.  That's many card-issuing banks do is still charge the foreign transaction fee simply because it was a foreign transaction done in "any" currency....doesn't matter that the foreign bank did the conversion....what matters is it was still a transaction done in a foreign country.  End result you get whacked twice...once by the foreign bank doing the DCC and once by your home country bank charging the foreign transaction fee.

I'm using a Schwab debit card which absolutely does not have a foreign transaction fee. When I say that using the DCC rate means paying $60-70 more, I'm referring to the difference between what is displayed on the DCC choice screen (where they tell you how much you will pay in your own currency) and the amount that ends up being actually withdrawn from my account when I've declined the conversion. So yes, the huge fee in this case is entirely on the Thai side.

[Pib]

43 minutes ago, khunjeff said:

I'm using a Schwab debit card which absolutely does not have a foreign transaction fee. When I say that using the DCC rate means paying $60-70 more, I'm referring to the difference between what is displayed on the DCC choice screen (where they tell you how much you will pay in your own currency) and the amount that ends up being actually withdrawn from my account when I've declined the conversion. So yes, the huge fee in this case is entirely on the Thai side.

That's strange.  I have and use a Schwab debit card also.  I always use Krungsri or TMB ATMs since they allowed 30K pulls....have never been offered a DCC transaction like you are being offered when using my Schwab debit card in those ATMs.  But I will admit it probably been a year since using my Schwab debit card in an TMB ATM because I've just been using a Krungsri ATM for the last year since it a little more convenient/closer than the TMB ATM.

[khunjeff]

25 minutes ago, Pib said:

That's strange.  I have and use a Schwab debit card also.  I always use Krungsri or TMB ATMs since they allowed 30K pulls....have never been offered a DCC transaction like you are being offered when using my Schwab debit card in those ATMs.  But I will admit it probably been a year since using my Schwab debit card in an TMB ATM because I've just been using a Krungsri ATM for the last year since it a little more convenient/closer than the TMB ATM.

I had never been offered DCC either, until maybe 6-8 months ago - I don't remember exactly. Since then, the screen comes up every time.