Reasons of change

[tool84]

Hi,

I'm looking currently at rates of Bkk Bank and Super Rich. If I wanted to transfer $20 000 Can by TT, I would get 584 950baht, without counting bank fees for the TT which should be around 1000baht in total. If I bring $20 000 in cash to change at Super Rich, well I will need to declare at customs, and I will get 589 000baht. Plus the stress and risk of having so much cash on me. Cost difference is 5500baht so roughly $180. Anyone know of a better way to bring Can money with less cost?

Thanks

[cigar7]

You should verify the bank fees at both ends of the transaction. I once phoned kBank about the fees and was told one cost, and then when the money arrived, there were additional costs. All foreign transfers go to Bangkok so they even charged for transferring the money from Bangkok to the account located in Pattaya, without prior notification.

Also verify that there is no intermediary bank involved, else there will additional bank fees. I encountered this when I transferred US$ from Canada to Kbank. Apparently Kbank does not have direct US$ clearing facilities in New York and they use Bank of America.

Some of the banks like to play with the exchange rate. They hold the funds for 3 to 5 days, to get you the lowest exchange rate.

[Pib]

When wiring money over Thai banks give you their TT Buying Rate which is about the best wire transfer rate the common man can get. The local Thai bank will charge approx. 0.25% (200 baht min, 500 baht max) to receive/convert the funds (whether arriving in foreign currency or baht). If using the Bangkok Bank NY branch to route that $20K over then there would be another $10 fee on top of above mentioned fee. Still cheap compared to most SWIFT transfers. Any other fees involved in the transfer will be Sending or Intermediary bank fees; not Thai bank /Bangkok Bank fees.

And be sure to send in your home country currency; do not allow your Sending bank to convert to baht before sending as their exchange rate will be lower than the Thai bank TT Buying Rate...basically, your bank's lower exchange rate is a hidden fee/profit for them.

If wiring the money, don't take the chance of sending it over just a few days before you climb on the plane to come to Thailand because if the money gets hung up somewhere due to a typo, name mismatch, holiday in the home country or Thailand, etc., a person could climb off the plane and find his money is still hung up in the pipeline somewhere.

For safety purposes you might want to carry over some money in the form of Travelers Checks, bigger the denomination the better since there is something like a 30 baht cashing fee plus 3 baht duty fee applied to each travelers checks and you also get a slightly lower rate than the TT Buying Rate, usually 0.1 to 0.2 baht/USD lower. But unless you can get traveler checks free/at a low cost from your home country bank that may make the cost a little too high....but a person usually has to pay for safety.

Good luck on the trip.

[zen56]

The disadvantage of the TT is that you don’t know what rate you are going to get. With cash in hand you can time the transaction to take advantage of the most favourable rate at Super Rich, (except when they are closed for public holidays!).

[Pib]

The disadvantage of the TT is that you don’t know what rate you are going to get. With cash in hand you can time the transaction to take advantage of the most favourable rate at Super Rich, (except when they are closed for public holidays!).

But even with foreign cash in hand when you need baht you need baht and you are going to have to visit Super Rich and take whatever the rate of the day/hour is. And what will the rate be tomorrow at Super Rich? Who knows as it will depend on the FOREX market ups and downs just like the TT Buying Rate...or debit card exchange rates.

Now I do agree you do have some timing latitude if you think the rate will go up tomorrow, you have enough baht in hand to get by till tomorrow, and you got a safe place to keep (hide) your foreign cash until tomorrow.

I somewhat do a similar timing thing to get my day-to-day living baht by using my Visa no foreign transaction fee debit cards to get baht from my US accounts and put some of that into my Thai bank accounts for use with those debit cards/ibanking. From experience I know the Visa exchange rate will be plus or minus a few stang the Thai bank TT Buying Rate...and that the Visa rate usually lags the FOREX market rate by one day. MasterCard exchange rates seem to do the same. So, if the FOREX market went up say 0.2 baht/USD today, I'm probably going to see a 0.2 baht/USD rise in the Visa rate for tomorrow...and it works in reverse also when the FOREX market goes down. But this Visa exchange rate daily trend don't seem to apply when the FOREX market is making unusually big changes up or down per day (i.e., a lot of volatility)...then it seems the Visa exchange rate gets conservative (Visa goes into exchange rate protection mode) and their rate will almost always be a little lower than the TT Buying Rate. Of course you wouldn't want to go this debit card route unless you have a no foreign transaction fee debit card and you can get by with whatever daily cash withdrawal limit applies to the card. For my cards I have a $1000 limit on each which is more than enough....which means I can withdraw a little over 60K baht each day at the current exchange rate between the two cards. And if using an AEON ATM there is no Bt150/Bt180 foreign card fee like all Thai bank ATMs apply--money immediately in hand from the US with no fees along the way.

[johnnyk]

Does anyone know the max amount of THB Super Rich will exchange into $US?

[Tomtomtom69]

Does anyone know the max amount of THB Super Rich will exchange into $US?

I don't actually think there is a maximum. I've seen people at Super rich exchange stacks of Euros in 500 Euro bills, even if you exchange to a foreign currency it's the same - it depends on the amounts of foreign currency you are exchanging to. Usually, they will exchange whatever amount you want provided there is enough of that foreign currency on hand. You might need to accept smaller or larger bills than you might like because they'll only exchange what they have. For example, I have exchanged many different currencies at Super rich but one time when I requested USD and not even a particularly large amount (just a few hundred USD) I only got 100 dollar bills because the 50s I wanted were not available. Similarly for EUR, I exchanged a few thousand and got less than half in 100s and the rest in 50s. No 200s or 500s were available.