Transfering foreign currency between Thai banks

[oldcpu]

Both my wife and myself have foreign currency accounts in different Thai banks, where we keep different currencies. 

 

Nominally, we very carefully plan where we put that currency, as we have always (possibly inaccurately) understood, that to transfer a foreign currency from one Thai bank, to another Thai bank, requires the currency to be converted first to Thai baht, and then transfer back from Thai baht to the foreign currency in the receiving bank. Hence one gets HIT with 2x foreign currency exchange.

 

My wife wants to transfer her Euros from her Krungsri (?) foreign currency account, to her SCB bank foreign currency account, as she discovered SCB gives >3% interest on a fixed term account (?) (as opposed to Krungsri which gives next to 0% interest).   She today asked a person at SCB bank if she could somehow transfer Euros into their bank without it being 1st exchanged into Thai baht.

 

She was advised it might be possible. She had to go to her Krungsri (?) bank, and ask to do an INTERNATIONAL SWIFT TRANSFER to SCB bank, even thou the transfer is not international. One then pays the fees for the Swift transfer, but that is a LOT cheaper than the currency exchange hit when going from Euros_to_Thai-Baht_back-to-Euros.   But she has to confirm now that Krungsri bank will allow here to transfer money out of their bank that way via Swift, to another Thai bank.   Possible < unsure > some Thai bank's policy may not allow such (as the money never leaves Thailand).

 

I am curious to find out if she will succeed.

 

Has anyone on Aseannow successfully done such a transfer of foreign currencies, between Thai accounts, without either (1) converting to Thai baht, or (2) transferring the money out of Thailand and then back into Thailand?   This approach of using Swift (granted there will be some fees) may be the way to do it for large amount of money transfers.

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