Like many I was curious as to the implications. My Wise account and debit card is based on a German address so this doesn't affect me. However my wife has a Thai (address) wise account and this could affect her. Wise: no bank guarantee. Neither of us use Wise to 'hold' any more money than necessary. Wise provides no 'bank' style guarantees for the funds in Wise, and near as i can determine only provide trivial interest on US and on Euro funds. Don't time currency exchange with Wise/Thai baht. I always (with 1 exception) keep my foreign money outside of Wise, and ONLY when I want to transfer to Thailand, do I transfer funds to a Thai bank via Wise. So the conclusion is do not use Wise as a 'holding account' trying to time the exchange rate. Rather use one's foreign bank account - which means try to keep a foreign bank account (which is something my wife and I do). Foreign banks pay better interest than Wise: Our foreign bank accounts pay interest ( better than Wise). We only use Wise for transferring funds (with one exception). I should qualify the above by saying, I rarely have done such transfers to Thailand with Wise. In the past, my transfers to Thailand bank have been too large to use Wise (as Wise only has made sense for relatively small money transfers). For larger transfers to Thai baht, as strange as it may read, SWIFT can be better than Wise. Pensions: I have my pensions deposited into foreign bank accounts (and NOT directly into Wise). Possibly those who have pensions deposited directly into Wise, if they wish to attempt to 'time the exchange rate' (which frankly IMHO is difficult to always reliably do) then do so with a foreign bank account. Stop transferring all one's foreign pension amounts directly to Wise if one wishes to time the Thai baht exchange rate. Taxation: Reference concerns re:Thailand tax ... IMHO it has always been a risk that money remitted to Thailand via an institution such as Wise could be tracked (for Thai taxation purposes) - - so has this really changed ?? IMHO only changed for those who considered there was no past risk for remitting such funds. Transfer money out of Thailand is an improvement !! The big positive is (after the change is implemented) is it will be possible to transfer Thai baht from one's Thai bank to Wise (I think) and then convert to a foreign currency. Of course that assumes one keeps Thai baht cash in Thailand that can be transferred to Wise - which I suspect is not that many (as Thai interest rates are low). The big negative I see (which is the exception I noted), is one's Thai based wise card (if one can obtain such) is less useful outside of Thailand, if one's foreign income is used to fund the Wise card. Say one transfers Euros to one's Thai based Wise account. It will be immediately converted to Thai baht as an intermediate currency. Then, say one is going to Australia for some travel, when one transfers the Thai baht to Australian dollars, one ends up paying 2x currency exchange ... ie Euros > Thai baht > Australian dollars. That is a downside. i am currently travelling in Australia, and I am using my Wise debit card for most payments - where I converted Canadian dollar (from a Canadian bank) DIRECT to Australian dollar in my Wise Account (and fortunately did NOT have to go through Thai baht). Keep foreign Wise card if legal: So for myself, I plan to retain my German address for Wise (where I try to visit that German address every year). My wife, thou, with her Thailand address Wise account, needs to take note. At least that is my current viewpoint - but I am modifying my view as I learn more.
