How to transfer money

[thaistyle2728]

IF I HAVE MONEY IN AN AMERICAN BANK AND WANT TO TRANSFER SOME OF IT TO A THAI BANK WHAT IS THE BEST WAY TO DO IT.....REMEMBER NOW WHEN I DO THIS I WILL BE IN THAILAND.....AND WILL HAVE OPENED AN ACCOUNT WITH THE BANGKOK BANK

[bapak]

I have always done it by instructing my overseas bank, be it Australia or USA, to SWIFT transfer $ to my Bangkok bank.. being sure to give complete account details of the Thai bank...

My bank accepts email instructions as it is coming from and going to my name..

Bapak

[Thetyim]

I can suggest two methods.

a)  Instruct your bank in writing or by fax to transfer money to your thai account. This will take about two weeks from my past expreience.  If your US bank is an internet bank then you can instruct by email.

Get a credit or debit card from your US bank (visa, mastercard, delta)  and then withdraw the money from any ATM.

I use both methods, the choice is yours.

[lopburi3]

Before you leave go to your US bank and fill out/sign a wire transfer agreement.  This provides your bank with authorization to perform wire transfers and a password for you to use only for this.  I would not expect them to allow email for this but you should be able to telephone them to do it.  You might want them to flag it as overseas as some will want to call back your local listed telephone number to confirm if they are not aware you are out of town.

When you get the account here, street address, name, your home address here and the SWIFT number provide this information to your bank and ask that they mark it as a 'recurring' transaction.  That way they can find the information quickly as they will probably want you to do this via telephone calls even if you have internet access so that they can get password and record your instructions.

Telephone transfer to US bank at opening of business takes about 40 hours to be credited into voice computer at my account here in Bangkok Bank if done on workdays.

You can also use the debit or atm card to withdraw funds here but suspect that you want the record for immigration that wire transfer gives you and amounts are higher than the max daily a card is authorized.  If not, people can and do use just this method.  But I find having the funds in a baht account with access from any atm of the national pool worth the wire transfer fee.

[easymoney]

All the advise that has been given is good but would caution you to advise US bank to send dollars as some try to covert to baht in us and then send. They take a fat 5%. Too another nice way is if you are near New york open account with Bangkok Bank, or in LA Thai Farmers(might be renamed Kaniskorn). I know many retirees have done this for direct deposits of SSN or other retirement checks. Another vehicle bank is HSBC but watch them on conversion. They have many branches in US. Then upon arrival here open account at HSBC here (dollar type) this goes for the aforementioned banks also. I learned a hard lesson this past week in that a wire transfer of about 200k was due in and so on week ago friday its here and I withdrew 8million to buy house. Nope wrong wire it was from my friend account as he was sending money also he owed me 8k . I go to bank and of course dollar dropped and a windfall to me and my friend of 1200 .No way Bangkok bank took it had to give back exact amount baht so they could reap the profit.Now if I had a dollar account different story. And I might add this t/t was Bank ones error.