A colleague of mine told me the following, so I said I would ask on the forum here if anyone had experienced anything similar.

He received a letter in Thai which appeared to be a list of CC transactions. The secretary in our office (who's English is NOT good) said it was a thing for the government. On asking at the bank, he was told it was a report of all his transactions for the year which they have to send to the Central Bank! They said they do this for all foreigners. Is this true?

A couple of months ago he tried to pay (using the same SCB card) for a subscription to one of the European Lotteries. He got a letter back from the european agent saying that their attempt to charge it to his credit card had been rejected. Is the bank entitled to tell you how you can spend your money? Do they have to report how you spend it to some higher authority? It all sounds very "Big Brother" to me!

G

Yes..that Statement Sending thing to Thai Credit Bureau is TRUE. It is a legal requirement. Not only Credit Cards, but all Loans, Leases..same rule. They normally inform the clients with a CC copy of the statement they send to the Thai Credit Bureau.. This is applicable to both Individual Customers and Companies..

About the Declining of payment..

May be His Card is not a gold card where you can use for International Payments..

or He has not paid the minimum balance on time and it is locked.

I am not sure about this..

Thanks for that info.

Does this report to the Credit Bureau apply to Thai citizens as well, or is it just another example of discrimination against foreigners?

Cheers,

Graham

It does apply to all Thais as well.

And as for European Lottery couldn't charge the fee to his credit card, I guess it's probably because he hasn't applied "Verified by VISA" thing. This is to protect the card holders from being hacked the card info on the 'net.

You should be able to use a credit card (Gold or otherwise) for international purchases; I used an SCB standard card for 3-4 years buying from the likes of Amazon with no problem.

However, I did have problems with purchases being declined locally; usually when I was around 75% of my credit limit for the month. I never received a satisfactory reply from SCB. They screwed up a number of other services and in the end I closed my account and credit card and moved to HSBC.