A warning about Thai Banks

[banagan]

If you have any of your money in a Thai bank, you need to be very careful.

Thai banks do not insure your money if it is stolen, like banks in the west.

If your card is stolen or cloned, and money robbed from your account, Thai banks do not replace, even if it has visa or mastercard on it.

Also, the daily limit on an ATM card can be up to 100,000 Baht. I even tried to reduce this, and couldn't.

Don't make the mistake that because they look like a western bank, they operate like one.

You should also remove the signing option on a debit card if you have one, even if the name on the card is western, it's highly unlikely it and the signature will be checked. The pin function is useless.

You can remove this option and use it just as an ATM card.

I'd also advice having 2 accounts, 1 where you have your money, with no cards, and one with a card which you can transfer money to.

[Halfaboy]

Re. your ‘If your card is stolen or cloned, and money robbed from your account, Thai banks do not replace, even if it has visa or mastercard on it’: I can tell you that this is not always true.

One of my Bangkok Bank Cards was cloned without noticing this. After a couple of days a representative from the Bangkok Bank Credit Card Department called and informed me on this.

All transactions without my knowledge were nullified on the spot and I was assured (which was later confirmed by email) that I did not need to pay for these expenses and I would not lose any money. Within a couple of days my cloned card was replaced by a new one.

Great service from the Bangkok Bank.

[thrilled]

My understanding Thailand does have some kind of insurance on bank accounts

[LaraC]

My understanding Thailand does have some kind of insurance on bank accounts

Really? Which banks? Which kind of accounts please?

My understanding is the opposite.

[thepool]

Another paranoiac who should return home to "safety" !

[canman]

"Also, the daily limit on an ATM card can be up to 100,000 Baht. I even tried to reduce this, and couldn't."

Should be your first clue to change banks or ask to speak with someone who can actually make a decision!

I bank with SBC and had the opposite problem; trying to raise my limit above 30K a day withdrawal from an ATM. Not bragging here, just had my affairs arranged so that all payments were due same time each month.

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

The Thai govt. has a deposit insurance protection system, similar to the U.S. FDIC. But, it only covers against losing your deposits thru the total financial collapse of the bank.

http://www.dpa.or.th/main.php?filename=index___EN

It does NOT protect at all against fraud by bank employees, closing of bank cards, stolen cards, etc etc.

Generally, Thai banks do indeed take the position that anything that happens PRIOR to you reporting a card lost or stolen or compromise (so they can freeze it) is your financial responsibility.

The cases of bank customers getting their losses reimbursed seem to be more rare than common, based on member reports here.

However, if someone is victimized by a known systemic fraud, like when BKK Bank's ATMs were compromised in certain areas a few months bank, the bank probably will make good in those kinds of widespread fraud situations.

But if you're on your own and just dealing with an individual situation, the odds probably aren't good.

Other than talking with the local bank management, which usually seems to lead nowhere, you can try contacting a somewhat new consumer advocate agency set up by the Bank of Thailand.

http://www.bot.or.th/English/FinancialLiteracy/Pages/FCC%20Strategy.aspx

Much of what the OP says is true and good advice.

It is true that you can, and often should, turn off the debit card function of Thai bank cards, so they cannot be used to drain your account with swipe and sign transactions if lost or stolen. That way, the card can only be used to withdraw funds at ATMs with your own secret PIN code.

Also, usually, either thru online banking or contacting your Thai bank directly, it's possible to change the daily transaction limits for both ATM withdrawals and POS purchases (if you haven't disabled those) to more reasonable amounts. The default amounts automatically chosen by the Thai banks are often quite high.

Depending on the particular Thai bank, it's often also possible to set up some system of either SMS and or email alerts anytime there's a transaction on your account. Some banks do that for free, others require a nominal monthly fee for the service.

Edited April 6, 2014 by TallGuyJohninBKK

[chubby]

what about turning off ATM functions, and just using the tellers, or is that too time consuming ?

[beano2274]

a couple of years ago I withdrew 20,000baht from an ATM but the money never came out, but the money was taken from my account, I phoned them up, they told me they would have to check the ATM records and if okay would pay me back, a few days later the money was returned to my account, this was the Bangkok Bank.

[wolfmanjack]

My daily limit on my bangkok bank account is only 20,000 baht.

i do have 2 accounts. 1 that has the money and one that I use the online banking to transfer money into to use online or take withdrawals by atm.

[JJ Madcow]

Limit might be 20.000 - 30.000 pr time i withdrew, but my 3 banks have 100.000 or 200.000 pr day, and the 1 time i need 100.000, i use ATM 5 times in the row.

I know many people here get they money back, if someone else withdrew them, never be a problem, Bank look it up, if from a ATM machine, it take some days for them to find the ATM, look at the pictures for whom withdrew the money, and see if it is you or other person, Not you, you get your money back of cause.

If one can prove in 1 city, and the money withdrew in other city and so on, Money back.

All so, if one add sms service, you get sms same sek as money are use from your account, and you can stop it from you online banking, call your bank call center and close the card.

I feel it is good and safe system.

[meatboy]

in over 30yrs.i have never had a problem,do you know why me&mrs.have never had a bank card.

[ezzra]

No card, No problems...cash is king, if I want cash, I draw directly from bank and keep

some cash at home, how hard is that to manage for grown ups?

[paulissa]

I was surprised how easy it was to raise my ATM daily withdrawal limit with SCB recently. I went into the bank expecting to fill out a load of paperwork but it was explained to me that all I had to do was go to the ATM and I could increase and decrease the limit from there. All that was needed to confirm the process was to enter the passport number that I had used when opening the account as further proof of who I was.

This does raise the issue of how easily a thief could increase the limit if he stole your card and passport as well! Therefore I keep a reasonable amount of money in the ATM account and the rest of my money in a separate account

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

what about turning off ATM functions, and just using the tellers, or is that too time consuming ?

You can always choose to only do counter transactions instead of using ATMs.

But I don't believe you can set the ATM withdrawal limits to 0 on any ATM cards, or disable the withdrawal function on the card. Even if your card is lost or stolen with the POS disabled, the thief presumably would have no way of knowing your PIN code.

You can, however, as I mentioned above, turn off/disable the POS (point of sale) function on the cards.

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

My daily limit on my bangkok bank account is only 20,000 baht.

i do have 2 accounts. 1 that has the money and one that I use the online banking to transfer money into to use online or take withdrawals by atm.

That's another good means of trying to ensure the safety of your funds.

Keep the bulk in a non card bearing account, and just enough for what you need in the card account.

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

I was surprised how easy it was to raise my ATM daily withdrawal limit with SCB recently. I went into the bank expecting to fill out a load of paperwork but it was explained to me that all I had to do was go to the ATM and I could increase and decrease the limit from there. All that was needed to confirm the process was to enter the passport number that I had used when opening the account as further proof of who I was.

This does raise the issue of how easily a thief could increase the limit if he stole your card and passport as well! Therefore I keep a reasonable amount of money in the ATM account and the rest of my money in a separate account

That's an interesting issue I've never heard anyone here raise before....

However, to do what you're suggesting, the thief would still need to know your PIN code in order to access your account via an ATM, right???

[chubby]

if one got into the habit of only doing counter withdrawals, would never have to worry about skimmers .......

[Pib]

My understanding Thailand does have some kind of insurance on bank accounts

Really? Which banks? Which kind of accounts please?

My understanding is the opposite.

Just for example, you can go to the Bangkok Bank webpage which talks about deposit protection and provides the weblink to the govt agency running the program where more info is available. I expect all Thai banks have such a link on their website somewhere...but other Thai bank websites don't come even close to having the detail/info the Bangkok Bank website does.

[djayz]

Yes, you CAN change the daily limit... mine is set at 20,000. I think you can do it at the ATM.

[Pib]

My daily limit on my bangkok bank account is only 20,000 baht.

i do have 2 accounts. 1 that has the money and one that I use the online banking to transfer money into to use online or take withdrawals by atm.

Basically ditto for me. While I have chosen a higher daily ATM card limit since there are times I need to withdraw more that 20,000/day, I use the 2 accounts approach like you do to minimize the amount in the account with ATM access "which is effectively setting an ATM limit." But on the "average" I probably keep around a 40,000 average balance in my account with ATM access...when it gets down to around 20,000 baht I will transfer some funds in from my other account which has no ATM access.

If you control the amount of money in the account with ATM card and say you had a very high ATM limit set (say 100,000 baht), if you only keep say 10,000 baht in the account any transaction over 10,000 would reject. By varying the level in the account with ATM by transferring funds in and out via ibanking it's easy and fast to effectively change your ATM limit several times per day if a person wanted to....vary it from a low amount to a high amount (or vice versa) as needed. However, as you know the first 5 ibanking transfers between accounts per month is free, but 6 and above transfers costs 10 baht fee per transfer. But 5 free transfers per month is more than enough for me to keep an acceptable balance in my account with ATM without incurring any transfer fees. You could do the same back and forth transfer at an ATM but you only get one free transfer per month, with subsequent transfers costing 10 baht per transfer. But using ibanking makes it really easy and fast.