Money Exchange

[lelapin]

I have a friend arriving in Pattaya shortly who will be staying at The Areca Lodge, Soi Dianna. I wondered what would be the nearest good money exchange to that location to change the sterling he brings with him.

[bbi1]

The small booth on 2nd Rd outside Pattaya Avenue / Villa Market. Don't listen to the people that say Damini Exchange/Gold Shop is the best, they are not. The one I mentioned is slightly better, they had the best rates.

[nigelforbes]

1 hour ago, bbi1 said:

The small booth on 2nd Rd outside Pattaya Avenue / Villa Market. Don't listen to the people that say Damini Exchange/Gold Shop is the best, they are not. The one I mentioned is slightly better, they had the best rates.

ALL currency exchange outlets use the same basic forex information system, there is only one source of the spot rate.

 

The only differences between currency exchange service is the amount of mark up or commission that is contained in the spread, that's the difference between the buy and the sell rate. In the case of the banks this is about 45 satang either side of the spot rate. In the case of the currency exchange booths the difference is much smaller, often only about 7 baht either side of spot. It therefore makes sense to change currency at an exchange booth rather than a bank. But it doesn't make any sense to shop around to see which exchange both is the best because you have almost no chance of ever finding out, the rates shown on the boards are out of date the second they are displayed because the spot rate changes several times every second. 

[topt]

26 minutes ago, nigelforbes said:

But it doesn't make any sense to shop around to see which exchange both is the best because you have almost no chance of ever finding out,

Sorry but I disagree re finding a higher paying exchange booth.

Certainly years ago when I used to use them TT and one or 2 others gave a consistently better rate than other exchanges - and you could negotiate with them. They do not change their rates (or never used to) as often as the spot rate or even the banks, so finding a consistently higher paying booth still makes sense IMHO.

 

I would suggest better to look at a banks web site to see a realistic exchange rate and then venturing out to compare at the booths. If nothing else you will feel better at getting a higher rate!

SCBs as an example - https://www.scb.co.th/en/personal-banking/foreign-exchange-rates.html

Unusually when I looked still quoting rates posted at 08.35am......

 

All be it that unless changing more than a few thousand the difference is unlikely to make much difference.  

[jacko45k]

Turn right out of Areca, walk down Soi Diana to Buakhao...left  there at Subway...about 30m on the left, next to gold shop, TT Exchange,

[nigelforbes]

1 hour ago, topt said:

Sorry but I disagree re finding a higher paying exchange booth.

Certainly years ago when I used to use them TT and one or 2 others gave a consistently better rate than other exchanges - and you could negotiate with them. They do not change their rates (or never used to) as often as the spot rate or even the banks, so finding a consistently higher paying booth still makes sense IMHO.

 

I would suggest better to look at a banks web site to see a realistic exchange rate and then venturing out to compare at the booths. If nothing else you will feel better at getting a higher rate!

SCBs as an example - https://www.scb.co.th/en/personal-banking/foreign-exchange-rates.html

Unusually when I looked still quoting rates posted at 08.35am......

 

All be it that unless changing more than a few thousand the difference is unlikely to make much difference.  

You will never know which of the exchange booths has the lowest rates unless you perform two identical transactions at exactly the same time, there is no other way to tell. Web sites and rate boards are of no help because the value of the spot rate changes every second. So tell me, how do you know that you've received a consistently better rate, how did you know it was, how did you prove that?

 

I'm sure you know already but for those that don't, this is how the forex works:

 

 

 

Edited December 14, 2022 by nigelforbes

[bbi1]

25 minutes ago, jacko45k said:

Turn right out of Areca, walk down Soi Diana to Buakhao...left  there at Subway...about 30m on the left, next to gold shop, TT Exchange,

TT Exchange are definitely not the best exchange rate place here

[jacko45k]

50 minutes ago, bbi1 said:

TT Exchange are definitely not the best exchange rate place here

Nor is that the question asked in the original post!

[Harveyboy]

2 hours ago, jacko45k said:

Turn right out of Areca, walk down Soi Diana to Buakhao...left  there at Subway...about 30m on the left, next to gold shop, TT Exchange,

yes TT is normally ok 

[topt]

3 hours ago, nigelforbes said:

So tell me, how do you know that you've received a consistently better rate, how did you know it was, how did you prove that?

I think you may have missed the point of what I was saying. 

It is not difficult to get a rough idea because, as I think I already mentioned, unless particularly volatile, they never used to change their rates as often as you are suggesting. A couple of web searches/phone calls and you would know enough.

 

[nigelforbes]

12 minutes ago, topt said:

I think you may have missed the point of what I was saying. 

It is not difficult to get a rough idea because, as I think I already mentioned, unless particularly volatile, they never used to change their rates as often as you are suggesting. A couple of web searches/phone calls and you would know enough.

 

It's a fact of life that exchange rate booths offer more attractive rates than banks, that's primarily because their overheads are lower, as said earlier, as low as 5 or 7 satang either side of the spot rate. It's also a fact of life that the intraday spot rate  is frequently very volatile. With such a small margin to work with, in a volatile environment, no business can afford not to change their rate, unless they have set their margin so high as to absorb any potential fluctuations, in which case they are not competitive. I am 100% certain that all exchange rate booths will have some linkage to a forex system to see what the current spot rate is and any transaction will be relative to what they see, to do anything other than that is to risk loose money on a transaction.

[DFPhuket]

This site will give you the daily exchange rates in Thai banks and several exchange booths. As you can see, exchange booths are better. Unfortunately, it's for Bangkok locations, not Pattaya. 

[nigelforbes]

2 hours ago, topt said:

I think you may have missed the point of what I was saying. 

It is not difficult to get a rough idea because, as I think I already mentioned, unless particularly volatile, they never used to change their rates as often as you are suggesting. A couple of web searches/phone calls and you would know enough.

 

You mentioned exchange rate volatility, here's the hourly and daily volatility charts for THB/USD, 132 to 1117 pips in the course of a single day, there's no way anyone can offer a constant rate throughout the trading day.

 

https://www.myfxbook.com/forex-market/volatility/USDTHB

[topt]

26 minutes ago, nigelforbes said:

You mentioned exchange rate volatility, here's the hourly and daily volatility charts for THB/USD, 132 to 1117 pips in the course of a single day, there's no way anyone can offer a constant rate throughout the trading day.

 

https://www.myfxbook.com/forex-market/volatility/USDTHB

Sorry but are you being deliberately obtuse?

Ever been to Pattaya and seen the written exchange rates on hand drawn cards in an exchange booths windows because I have. 

Even SCB today in the previous link I showed had only 3 changes and yesterday had 4.

I never mentioned a "constant rate throughout the day" ............

I'm out.

[nigelforbes]

4 hours ago, topt said:

Sorry but are you being deliberately obtuse?

Ever been to Pattaya and seen the written exchange rates on hand drawn cards in an exchange booths windows because I have. 

Even SCB today in the previous link I showed had only 3 changes and yesterday had 4.

I never mentioned a "constant rate throughout the day" ............

I'm out.

Sorry, no I'm not, if it came across that way it was unintentional.

 

Look, we may have to agree to  disagree on this subject. I simply cannot see how a board rate can be maintained, I can't, to me that's impossible in forex.

. 

 

 

[nigelforbes]

7 hours ago, topt said:

Sorry but are you being deliberately obtuse?

Ever been to Pattaya and seen the written exchange rates on hand drawn cards in an exchange booths windows because I have. 

Even SCB today in the previous link I showed had only 3 changes and yesterday had 4.

I never mentioned a "constant rate throughout the day" ............

I'm out.

I have been rethinking what you wrote about having boards in the windows showing what the rate is and that rate being maintained for long periods. I can imagine a scenario where exchange outlets do that during times of high certainty baht strengthening. If the outlet is more or less certain that THB is only going one way, perhaps because of recent economic news, advertising a fixed rate makes some sense from their business perspective. But doing so must make less sense from a customer perspective because it means that as the value of the spot rate reduces, the margin or markup amount increases, making the rate more and more uncompetitive. The only realistic way to see whether an exchange rate is any good or not is to turn on streaming and stream spot rates onto your phone and compare them against the exchange rate being offered by the bank/outlet. 

 

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/THB=X?p=THB=X&.tsrc=fin-srch

 

 

https://markets.ft.com/data/currencies/tearsheet/summary?s=usdthb

[ChrisP24]

Don't forget that exchanges have an inventory.  They start the day with a bunch of physical baht, and end the day with (hopefully) less baht and (hopefully) a bunch of physical foreign currency that they have to exchange the next day for baht at that next day's exchange rate.  So when the baht is rising, they make the spread plus an extra profit.  And when the baht is falling, they make the spread but have a loss that they can either 1) choose to roll forward and recover with the next day's rate, or 2) change their rate during the day towards what they think tomorrow's rate will be for them when they (replenish their inventory (buy more baht).

 

And some exchanges have more than one day of inventory on hand, so might be more inclined to keep their rate the same for the whole day, especially when the baht is rising.  That makes them more competitive, and they can afford to be more competitive.

 

But I think a simpler truth is that some of the mom and pop exchanges without a lot of nearby competing stalls just set rates once per day based on what they paid for their current inventory of baht when selling each foreign currency.

 

Kind of like why prices between gas stations can vary so much based on what they paid when their underground tanks were last filled.