Hi all, I have had a bangkok bank account for about 6 years now, I find them problematic and generally unhelpful, so I want to park my visa money in there but open an account with another bank for general use and daily transactions, can anyone recommend a bank that seems to be good to use..many thanks

I've used Kasikorn for 18 years. Never a single problem. Good app. Nice green colour.

I like having two accounts at SCB. The SCB EZ savings account currently pays 1.5% (up to 1M ฿). I also have a regular savings account from them that I use for daily expenses. I keep the bulk of my funds in the EZ collecting the better interest and to meet the financial requirements for extensions. To make it easy for Immigration, I keep the # of transactions on the EZ account low by using weekly transfers from it to the regular savings account. Their app makes the transfers easy, when I save it as a favorite. The SCB app also makes it easy to pay utility+phone+internet bills quickly.

19 hours ago, Upnotover said:

I've used Kasikorn for 18 years. Never a single problem. Good app. Nice green colour.

Agreed...19 years for me ..😊!

Over about 15 years, my experience has been that KBank and CitiBank were the best banks in Thailand. Of course, about 2 years ago CitiBank sold their Thai operation to UOB (sadly).

Now, KBank is by far has the best service.

I've had accounts in almost every bank in TH, and there is very little difference, if any, with any of them. Just pick one that is convenient to your location.

In my early days I had Thai Farmer, BB, and SCB accounts - each of the companies I worked for used different banks and suggested I open an account with the same bank they used.

Eventually I settled on SCB for my company's and personal accounts for 3 decades. Always ok, whichever branch I use.

Pretty much all Thai banks are okay apart from Bangkok Bank... they are the worst of the lot. SCB seems pretty good to me.

Kasikorn definitely. They are also up to speed with latest developments in IT. Can get bank letter easily and good links when paying online. But they need face recognition when making transfers which is secure but a bit of a hassle. Avoid TTB!

I've had my personal account at kbank for many many years. Main business account with them as well, but also tried other banks for the business. I like kbank the best.

BB were over officious, so went to Kbank, who have been great.

Without a doubt Krungsri aka the yellow bank, 15min max for immigration letter and statement, you can send money to any other Thai bank by using their ATMs, you can email them without signing in, and they reply very quickly, interest rates on a par with all other banks. Can withdraw 30,000 b in one go.

I made a complaint about an ATM machine that kept closing down on Koh Chang and less than 10 days later they had fitted a new one.

On 1/17/2026 at 3:22 PM, essex boys said:

can anyone recommend a bank that seems to be good to use..many thanks

The answer is Kbank (Kasikorn).

You can close this thread now. 😉

I use Bangkok Bank (BBL) and SCB and agree with OP, I'm considering moving some away from BBL to another bank. For a period, I had some find-books in Kasikorn/K-Bank, but they were not too cooperative – which might be due to the local branch manager – so, I closed my accounts there. However, Kasikorn generally has a good reputation – and color, if you like green...👍😀 – so if the branch manager has changed, they might see me again; the branch is within walking distance. I'm OK with SCB but I wish to use more than one bank.

Spouse and I have accounts at three or four different banks but we like the Yellow Bank best, especially the personal service we get at the Central Festival branch in Pattaya.

BKK Bank...u'm parked my 800K Baht in it only just because I used it in the early days..........but no more...just so difficult to deal with in both personal and business banking.

   

IMHO, stick with SCB or even Kasikornbank (KBank) are the way to go................

 According to AI engines the top most favorable Thailand banks on customer based (Net Promotor Score) NPS are KBank and SCB bank

Avoid the government-owned banks.

Since Bangkok Bank is having regulatory problems (of its own making!) and is then passing these issues on to genuine (non-money-laundering) customers, I suggest a large, established, plc bank with a large network of branches and relationships with the international banking system. That would probably be Kasikorn, SCB and Krungsri.

On 1/20/2026 at 9:24 PM, brian69 said:

Without a doubt Krungsri aka the yellow bank, 15min max for immigration letter and statement, you can send money to any other Thai bank by using their ATMs, you can email them without signing in, and they reply very quickly, interest rates on a par with all other banks. Can withdraw 30,000 b in one go.

I made a complaint about an ATM machine that kept closing down on Koh Chang and less than 10 days later they had fitted a new one.

I like Krungsri. Very good ATM network. Downside is that sometimes my card is not recognized. It offers slightly better FX rates than SCB and Kasikorn. My western Bank changed from SCB to BB as its correspondent, but I just don't like BB because it doesn't have as many ATMs as Krungsri in Hua HIN.

Has anyone used the Islamic Bank of Thailand? My wife wants to switch to them.

I use QR Code scanning a lot to pay for things, especially on Lazada, and don't want to give out a debit card. The Islamic Bank uses the paotang app for "scan" but from what I can tell it is only available to Thai nationals and I'm here on a marriage visa.

Are they a good bank?

Is there an alternative for using "scan"?

On 1/17/2026 at 4:05 PM, gamb00ler said:

I like having two accounts at SCB. The SCB EZ savings account currently pays 1.5% (up to 1M ฿). I also have a regular savings account from them that I use for daily expenses. I keep the bulk of my funds in the EZ collecting the better interest and to meet the financial requirements for extensions. To make it easy for Immigration, I keep the # of transactions on the EZ account low by using weekly transfers from it to the regular savings account. Their app makes the transfers easy, when I save it as a favorite. The SCB app also makes it easy to pay utility+phone+internet bills quickly.

Get a Jad Tem account, it pays 1,25% and works similar to a normal savings account

I used to say Kbank only, but when it comes to doing changes related to passport updates/phone number changes etc. out of province recently, I have found KTB to be much easier to work with. Both are great though and I generally use Kbank for daily and KTB for longterm.

Subjective opinion (I have accounts at SCB, BB. and Kbank).

I would say for general use Kasikorn Bank is the best of those three.

But I actually use BB much more for everyday stuff than any of them for personal reasons of how I've structured different uses for different banks many years ago.

Happily I use SCB instead of BB for visa purposes.

Hi all, thanks for the many replies, I have opened a kasiorn bank account literally in and out in 30 minutes, I have tried to open a bank account with SCB but they wanted a mountain of paperwork including copies of my marriage certificate and wife’s ID etc, then then took all the paperwork copies and said that they have to send them to head office in Bangkok for approval…i am still waiting to see what happens..

Bangkok Bank has become an unmitigated disaster and I would strongly discourage all foreigners from banking with them. Over the 23 years I have banked with them, I have watched the quality of branch staff and management deteriorate markedly.

The final straw for me was the recent requirement to apply for a yellow house registration book which I politely told the branch manager that I didn't want to go through the hassle of obtaining as it was a very time consuming and not-inexpensive process to gather all the required documentation and it had absolutely no other value than to satisfy BKK's neurotic and redundant need for identity confirmation. I was assured by the bank manager that this was acceptable and that they would allow me to roll-off my term accounts and close all my accounts over the course of 2026. Today, when I attempted to roll over a maturing term deposit, I was quite unexpectedly told I could no longer withdraw or transfer the money to another account unless I complied with the bank's demand for additional identity verification (either a yellow book or a letter from my embassy (verifying God knows what).

I was able to open accounts with both SCB and Kasikorn Bank with my passport, driver's license, auto registration book, and old letters from immigration verifying my address.

Looking back, I don't think the bank manager, despite lengthy explanations about why it was difficult for me to obtain a yellow house registration book, and much sympathetic head nodding, ever discussed my individual situation with the head office and ultimately didn't give a rat's ass about whether I was retained as a customer, despite maintaining 3-4 MM baht in deposits over the years. My accounts appear to have been frozen indefinitely until I comply with the bank's demand, which actually strikes me as illegal.

Right now I never want to set foot in Bangkok Bank again.

I have the same issue with Bangkok Bank. Obtaining a yellow book IS a laborious and not inexpensive process but it will have other users down the road so I have started down that road. As soon as I have it, I intend to open a Kasikorn Bank account (at visa renewal time to mitigate there being two sets of bank statements which would be a PITA as I use the monthly income method).
What REALLY concerns me after reading this thread is that Bangkok Bank would not allow Gecko123 to actually remove his own money without the Yellow Book. Is that even legal? My branch manager gave me as option No.2 (No. 1 being get the yellow book or you don't get your account back) to "come into the branch, withdraw all your money and go somewhere else"....

7 minutes ago, PhitsanulokPhil said:

As soon as I have it, I intend to open a Kasikorn Bank account

You might be interested in the recent reports about opening a Kasikorn account......

Many thanks for all the replies and helpful advice, im now with kasikorn bank and it was a fairly simple process to open the account, the app works a treat and im overall pleased with them. After reading here about people’s negative experience with the banks here, I can see why people use visa agents to get their visas, it seems to be not a great idea to tie up a lot of money in a bank that can then be frozen without notice….very worrying

On 1/29/2026 at 10:13 AM, CallumWK said:

Get a Jad Tem account, it pays 1,25% and works similar to a normal savings account

Sounds very similar to EZ savings but with slightly lower interest. I don't plan on ever keeping more than 1M฿ in Thailand so EZ account is just right. I see that for Jad Tem... the first 100K only gets .25%.... no thanks..... all funds in EZ get 1.5%.

On 2/19/2026 at 8:53 AM, PhitsanulokPhil said:

I have the same issue with Bangkok Bank. Obtaining a yellow book IS a laborious and not inexpensive process but it will have other users down the road so I have started down that road. As soon as I have it, I intend to open a Kasikorn Bank account (at visa renewal time to mitigate there being two sets of bank statements which would be a PITA as I use the monthly income method).
What REALLY concerns me after reading this thread is that Bangkok Bank would not allow Gecko123 to actually remove his own money without the Yellow Book. Is that even legal? My branch manager gave me as option No.2 (No. 1 being get the yellow book or you don't get your account back) to "come into the branch, withdraw all your money and go somewhere else"....

When BBK first started to pressure me to get a house registration book, there was a period of time where I could have closed my daily account and moved to another bank and that would have been the end of the story. The problem was that I had several term accounts (3, 6, 12 and 3 year) all of which would have come up for renewal during 2026. I most likely could have cancelled all of these accounts early on, but this, no doubt, would have resulted in forfeiting the earned interest on the accounts which is something I didn't particularly want to do. I had several conversations with the branch manager about just letting me wait for the term accounts to expire over the course of 2026 without getting a yellow book, and the manager clearly told me that that would be acceptable. This was definitely not a case of me misunderstanding what he said due to language barrier problems. But in January when I attempted to begin the process of closing the first of the term accounts, I was abruptly told that I couldn't do this (transfer funds from a fixed account into my daily account). I was still able to withdraw funds from my daily account, which I immediately did, but I was prevented from transferring funds from one account to another.

Regarding getting the yellow book, if your amphoe is anything like mine this is a very cumbersome process which involves getting a letter from your embassy verifying your passport is genuine, and then contacting the Thai foreign affairs office and getting some other verification from them as well. Not to mention the hassle of getting the owner of the property and the puu yai involved as well. Bangkok Bank did show me an internal document which showed that BKK would accept several alternative documentations other than a yellow book, including simply obtaining a letter from your embassy verifying that your passport was genuine. I was able to do this relatively easily by mail (1600 baht processing fee plus return courier 100 baht fee) with the US embassy with less than a week turn around time. I didn't see any benefit in obtaining a yellow book, as BKK bank

is the only time I've ever been asked for a yellow book in 25 years of living here. Even though I have satisfied BKK's demand for verification of the authenticity of my passport, I am still leaving BKK bank for the following reasons.

BKK's demand that I verify my passport (after 23 years of doing business with them) struck me as extremely high-handed and somewhat xenophobic. My understanding is that BKK experienced some problem with foreigners opening bank accounts with fake passports. I get that that is a problem, and banks have Know Your Customer requirements, but demanding that all foreigners go through the process of verifying that their passports are authentic, struck me as overkill and punitive towards foreigners. I thought to myself, would BKK be demanding that all Thai nationals verify that their national identity cards were authentic if they discovered that some Thais were using bogus id cards to open accounts? Of course they wouldn't dare do that because they know full well that there are a dozen other banks out there that a Thai could move to with the drop of a hat. BKK seemed to be banking on the fact that changing banks is a more cumbersome process for foreigners. And the thought that they would dare freeze or threaten to freeze accounts of ordinary Thai customers I find laughable. As I told several locals, if a bank pulled a stunt like that with Thais, Thai customers would be in the bank armed with machetes and pitchforks.

The freezing, and threats to freeze my account as a foreigner living oversees was so jarring and traumatizing that it deeply shook my trust in BKK bank. I asked myself, if they were willing to do this to coerce me into complying with their high-handed demands, were there other circumstances where they would feel entitled to freeze or limit access to my bank funds, i.e., during a banking crisis?

The other major turn-off about how this handled, is that there was never any effort to explain in English WHY the bank felt a need to do this, the proceedures needed to fulfill their request, or a full disclosure of what options customers had to fulfill the authentication requirement and what the deadline dates were. Another thing which stuck in my craw was that I was initially told by BKK's staff that getting a yellow book was a government regulation, and it was only after checking around with other banks that I found out that it was only BKK bank who was requiring this. All in all, I thought the whole thing was handled in an unprofessional, high-handed and arrogant manner which left a permanent bad taste in my mouth, and made the decision to leave BKK final.