Western Union

[IMA_FARANG]

They will want to know the following to send money to you in Thailand:

• Your name
• Your mailing address
• A phone number to contact you.

The sender pays the fee for the transfer. So the cost of the transfer is deducted form the amount transferred.

You need to have the sender contact you, usually by phone or by email if you trust email. Western Union will assign a tracking Number to the transaction. The sender is told the Tracking Number. It is up to the sender to contact you by some other method and tell you that Tracking Number. II can be done by a phone call or by email.

To pick up the money here in Thailand you will need:

• Your passport
• and that tracking number (That's very important, you must know the tracking number to get the funds).
• They may also ask for a photo I.D. card, but often a passport is enough identification.
• If the recipient is a Thai, a valid Thai government I.D. card is usually enough.

But I stress again, you must know that tracking number. Everything is in the computer and indexed by that tracking number. Without that tracking number you won't get the money.

Also try if possible to have the sender pay in the local currency and get the exchange rate in Thailand. Otherwise you will get a poor exchange rate if you change the currency before the funds are sent.

Be aware however, some Western Union offices will insist of changing to Thai Baht before they accept the funds for transfer. You will get their exchange rate, if you do that and it will mean you will lose money on the exchange rate.

And, as a rule to thumb. expect the fee to transfer money to be about 10% of the amount you transfer (I base this on transferring Dollars to Thailand from the U.S.)

So I would only do a transfer by Western Union in an emergency situation, due to that roughly 10% cost of transfer.

However, the advantage is that it only takes less than 24 hours for the money to arrive even with a 12 hour time difference to the U.S. It's fast, but it's expensive.

Edited July 2, 2014 by IMA_FARANG