American banks have blocked ATM use in Thailand!

[CraigSchuler]

I shared my experience in hopes that it might help another fellow Farang who doesn't find himself in a bind one day. After all the negative feedback, I won't be doing it again!

[gk10002000]

Nothing to it.

Your cards were just flagged. A simple phone call will fix it.

Next time, tell your Bank you will be using the card in Thailand, before you go.

Reminds me to call them before March. I told them just a year. They will freeze your card, unless they know it is you.

I used to tell my bank I was going to Thailand and never had a problem there. However, twice, when I got back to the states and I was driving across the country to my next contract assignment location, the card was blocked! And it took several days for them to unblock it. Now, I don't bother in either direction and I have not had an issue. Once their "neural" network sees you travel it seems to be fairly tolerant of different locations. Once I even got a call as I was about day four into my drive across the USA and the credit officer from the bank called and said it looked like somebody had taken your card and was driving across the country. uh huh. I don't mind the courtesy call to check before you find out in some checkout line that the card is blocked.

[Pib]

I shared my experience in hopes that it might help another fellow Farang who doesn't find himself in a bind one day. After all the negative feedback, I won't be doing it again!

Please continue to post. I do the same thing in sharing my experiences in hopes it help, but I realize in this anonymous keyboard warrior world of blogs you will always have x-amount of warriors who will make negative, personal comments....sometimes comments are innocent but taken the wrong way on a computer screen where in real life face-to-face talking they would not be....and a few posters are just trolls and/or A-holes as you can tell it from looking at many of their posts. And it's not uncommon for a thread to go somewhat off topic but many times the off topic posts, or maybe I should say topics which added another branch to the topic trunk, are indeed providing good info. Additionally, sometimes I find out what I thought/posted was incorrect and I usually issue a "I stand corrected" response....I have earned plenty of "I stand corrected" badges for my anonymous keyboard warrior uniform. Cheers.

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

The sharing of financial and banking information and experiences here is always appreciated...

But especially on these topics, it's important to distinguish between a person's individual experience with a particular bank at one point in time vs. extending that same notion to ALL banks.

The headline for this thread -- American banks have blocked ATM use in Thailand! -- certainly appears to have overgeneralized the actual situation quite a bit. But as Pib noted above, it certainly wouldn't be the first time that any of us have posted and then found ourselves being appropriately corrected.

Just this past week, one member posted here about having been charged a 180 baht withdrawal fee using a U.S. VISA card at a Thai Military Bank ATM. And I responded that I had done such a withdrawal just two weeks earlier and the fee was only 150 baht. Well, it turned out, apparently, TMB raised the fee at the beginning of the month. So I learned something new and important through the back and forth process, and so did everyone else reading here.

Just don't take it personal, and realize that we're all prone to making mistakes or getting incorrect information from time to time.

[bill1369]

I have a small direct deposit that goes to USAA bank in US. Without any problem, I withdraw that money each month when its posted using my USAA debit card. And, yes, USAA knows I live in Thailand.

There is also another "+" with using USAA bank, especially since Thai banks keep raising ATM withdrawal fees. USAA reimburses its customers for 3 ATM fees each month up to $15 total.

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

The only problems with that are....

-- USAA charges a 1% foreign currency fee on foreign ATM withdrawals with its debit card.

--with the current Thai ATM fee of 180 baht amounting to about $5.50, the $15 ATM reimbursement would not fully cover reimbursement of 3 withdrawals, but it would fully cover 2+.

[Pib]

-- USAA charges a 1% foreign currency fee on foreign ATM withdrawals with its debit card.

That's why my USAA debit card lives in the darkness of my safe...only my no foreign transaction fee debit cards that reimburse see the light of day.

[JimGant]

I have a small direct deposit that goes to USAA bank in US. Without any problem, I withdraw that money each month when its posted using my USAA debit card. And, yes, USAA knows I live in Thailand.

A USAA ACH transfer to Bangkok Bank is cheaper than using USAA's MasterCard/Cirrus ATM/Debit card (or Cirrus ATM card only, for their savings account) for getting your cash in Thailand. No big savings, but this option does give you monthly unlimited cost free ATM withdrawals -- plus, the security of the Be1st Smart Card, which can't be cloned, unlike your USAA card.

Easy to set up, assuming you have a Bangkok Bank account. Just log into your USAA on-line account, add your BB account as a transfer account, with BB New York's ABA routing number. Check the box that says something like 'I have no authority over this account,' and viola. (The latter checkmark, albeit untrue, just says all transfers will be one-way -- to Thailand -- and thus eliminates a two trial transfer drill). Good to go in a couple of days, with a default transfer amount of $5000/day -- but easily raised via phone call.

Savings? Well, with a TT rate of 32.70 (Thursday's before-fee rate for ACH transfers), a $1500 ACH transfer would have an effective rate of 32.46; and a $2000 ACH transfer, 32.52 -- after front and back end fees. Using your USAA ATM card would get you an effective rate of 32.37 (and this is assuming Cirrus rates equate to TT rates, which historically they haven't, being 6-8 satang worse).

Anyway, not a get rich scheme, for sure. But something you may want to investigate. Oh, the time lapse for inputting an ACH request, and receiving the money averages 36 hours, assuming all business days (Monday, 9:00PM input, here 9:00AM Wednesday -- both Thai times).

[Pib]

I have a small direct deposit that goes to USAA bank in US. Without any problem, I withdraw that money each month when its posted using my USAA debit card. And, yes, USAA knows I live in Thailand.

There is also another "+" with using USAA bank, especially since Thai banks keep raising ATM withdrawal fees. USAA reimburses its customers for 3 ATM fees each month up to $15 total.

Let's say that small amount is $750. You do one withdrawal to get it all, get reimbursed the local Thai ATM Bt150-180 fee by USAA so that is a wash, but you USAA still applies a 1% foreign transaction fee which is $7.50.

Now if you had a American Express Bluebird prepaid debit card you can have direct deposit go directly to your Bluebird account or fund it via ACH transfer from USAA, withdrawal up to $750/day, no foreign transaction fee, you will need to withdraw from a Bangkok Bank ATM since only they support AmEx cards as far as I know, Bangkok Bank only charges Bt50 (approx $1.50) local ATM for AmEx cards, and Bluebird will charge a $2.50...and Bluebird does not reimburse any fees...so when the dust settles it cost you approx $4.00 to use the Bluebird card in comparison to the USAA debit card charges of $7.50.

And the AmEx exhange rate appears to equal or may be slightly better than the Visa exchange rate which is usually a hair better than the Mastercard exchange rate...the USAA card is a Mastercard logo card.

Now I don't have the BlueBird card but a couple of no foreign transaction fee debit cards that reimburse ATM fees, but in a recent thread where the Bluebird card was talked quite a bit and jdgruen brought the card to everyone's attention (be sure to read the whole thread), it appears to be a good card to have, especially if your current cards carries a foreign transaction fee and/or don't reimburse local ATM fees. I know the term prepaid debit card usually conjures up a debit card with a lot of fees (it did for me when first hearing about it), but the BlueBird does not have a lot of fees. In fact if you use it in the BlueBird network of ATMs you won't experience any fees for anything...preloading, withdrawal, annual, dormancy, etc. At a minimum it could be a good backup card to have in case your current Visa/Mastercard debit card changes foreign transaction fees, maybe overnight change their foreign transaction polices/fees, gets blocked, gets lost, etc.

Edited November 21, 2014 by Pib