This is not about Thai visas per se, but could be relevant to someone applying for a Thai visa, and using a Thai card to pay for the visa in a country where the applicant does not have a bank account.

I have, numerous times, applied for a Vietnamese evisa while in Cambodia, and paid for it with my Thai master card or my Vietnamese visa card. You turn on your Thai or Vietnamese Sim for a few minutes, and you receive your OTP to facilitate the payment. Has worked without fail in the past.

Not this time. Neither my Vietnamese nor my Thai Sim worked. Couldn't get an OTP, and cards are the only way (other than Vietnam digital payments) to pay for the visa.

I went to the Smart and Metphone offices to ask what has changed. They said Thai Sim don't work anymore in Cambodia, partnerships have been severed, but they couldn't explain why the Vietnamese one wasn't working either.

I ended up going through an agent, paying 45 $ instead of 25.

The agent said there are many foreigners with the same problem as me, the inability to pay with non Cambodian cards.

Forgot to ask her whether this is a new problem, but will do that when I pick up the visa.

I can't speak about Cambodia or Vietnam, but when I'm traveling I have my Thai & UK eSIMs on the phone then add a physical SIM for whatever country I'm travelling in.

My Iphone allows me to have 2 SIMs active at any one time, so I keep the country I'm travelling in as the Primary & the only one to use Data, then switch between my Thai or my UK one as Secondary so I can receive calls & SMSs.

E.g. I was in Malaysia for 4 weeks so had my Physical Malaysian SIM as primary & because I had a few problems with my UK Bank I had my GiffGaff eSIM as secondary so I was able to call / receive calls & Send/Receive SMSs as though I was in the UK, once this was all sorted I switched secondary to be my Thai AIS eSIM & was able to receive SMS/OTPs and calls.

I'm in the UK now, so it's GiffGaff eSIM as primary, Thai AIS eSIM as secondary, I've no need for my Malaysian SIM until I get back to KL in October so that stays switched off.

Edited 9 hours ago9 hr by SamSpade

Trolling post along with reply removed

OP, you don't have master/visa card in your pp country bank?

I also go offer to Vietnam and use my Oz debit card to pay for eVisa

Activate "Voice over WiFi" or "WiFi Calling" (VoWiFi) for your Thai SIM card. Despite the name, it carries not only voice calls, but SMS messages as well.

I use this myself to receive Thai OTPs reliably in neighboring countries, including Cambodia (where, as said, Thai SIM cards currently don't work otherwise).

The same feature may be available for your Vietnamese SIM card as well.

Edited 8 hours ago8 hr by Caldera

1 hour ago, Caldera said:

Activate "Voice over WiFi" or "WiFi Calling" (VoWiFi) for your Thai SIM card. Despite the name, it carries not only voice calls, but SMS messages as well.

I use this myself to receive Thai OTPs reliably in neighboring countries, including Cambodia (where, as said, Thai SIM cards currently don't work otherwise).

The same feature may be available for your Vietnamese SIM card as well.

Do you activate that while in Thailand, or can that be done from abroad?

13 minutes ago, thecyclist said:

Do you activate that while in Thailand, or can that be done from abroad?

For the initial activation, you may need to be in Thailand. But it's possible that it was activated at some point depending on your phone and its settings, so it might still be worth a shot to just try it.

When I activated it, years ago, I had to run a USSD code. That's definitely something you couldn't do in Cambodia with a Thai SIM card now.