I've had a Wise account for years already with my overseas address on it, and I got kind of excited when I first heard Wise is launching in Thailand, because you will be able to make payments using the Thai QR code system, PromptPay. So I was thinking about switching to a local address on my Wise account after May 19 when Wise in Thailand goes live under Bank of Thailand guidelines in order to get access to that.

But then I realized there are two significant downsides to having a Thai address on your Wise account and making it Thailand based. I think someone living fully in Thailand and dealing mainly in Thai baht would not run into these issues, but if you usually fund your Wise account with foreign currency and deal in multiple currencies, then I do not think it works.

The first issue is that any foreign currency transferred into your Wise account gets automatically converted into Thai baht immediately. That does not work for me. I need to hold multiple currencies, and I do not want dollars or euros being converted into baht on arrival. Yes, I know you can convert it back to another currency after it's converted to baht, but that means extra FX fees from Wise and possible losses on the exchange going back and forth.

The second issue is that you cannot transfer money out of a Thai Wise account in any currency other than baht. So even if you currently have a large balance in dollars or euros, there would be no way to withdraw it in those currencies after May 19 if you switch your Wise account to a Thai address.

As I understand it, these are all based on Bank of Thailand rules. In that sense, the Wise account starts to behave more like a Thai bank account than a fin-tech payment account, where incoming foreign transfers are converted into baht right away and go into your baht balance and then it becomes difficult to get any of that money back out of the account into another currency and back out of the country.

Anyway, because of all this, I do not think I can go ahead with it. It would have been nice to have access to the QR code payment system in Thailand, but I can live without it. The two points above are dealbreakers for me.

No need for Wise QR payments if you have thai bank apps, i have three. Seems best to have a non thai address

Before moving an existing Wise account to Thailand in a hurry, I would wait and see which of the changes that have been discussed will actually be implemented, and how. With these things, the devil tends to be in the details.

5 hours ago, scubascuba3 said:

No need for Wise QR payments if you have thai bank apps, i have three. Seems best to have a non thai address

Thanks, I agree. It would’ve been handy to have the ability to make QR payments in Thailand without having a Thai bank account. But as you said, best not to have a Thai address on the account if not necessary.

1 hour ago, Caldera said:

Before moving an existing Wise account to Thailand in a hurry, I would wait and see which of the changes that have been discussed will actually be implemented, and how. With these things, the devil tends to be in the details.

That’s generally true, but most of the changes here are not things that Wise is necessarily in control of. I think these are all Bank of Thailand rules that they will have to follow under the new license. It’s the same when Wise launched in Singapore. There were certain things that they had to set in place there as well, which weren’t their own policy, but dictated by the central bank in Singapore.

One thing is for sure, this is finally going to break up the local monopoly on digital payments.

I’m hoping it causes Thai banks to drop their fees on incoming wire transfer remittance. I’m also hoping that Thai banks will finally allow you to add their debit cards to digital wallets like Apple Pay and Google Wallet, which local banks refuse to do at the moment because they don’t want to share any payment fees with Apple or Google.

1 hour ago, FriscoKid said:

That’s generally true, but most of the changes here are not things that Wise is necessarily in control of. I think these are all Bank of Thailand rules that they will have to follow under the new license. It’s the same when Wise launched in Singapore. There were certain things that they had to set in place there as well, which weren’t their own policy, but dictated by the central bank in Singapore.

That's a valid point, but the fact that they haven't directly informed us existing Thai Wise account holders yet (I mean those of us who are already registered with a Thai address with them) makes me think that some details still need to be fleshed out.