New 100-baht banknotes on circulation Thursday

[Guest]

Clearly only a few other posters have ever been involved in the purchase or sale of Thai property, whether it be land or houses or condos, the plastic-bags full of B1,000-notes at our local land-office are hardly convenient or secure, as people scurry into corners to count & recount them !

I recall our paying once, with a bankers-draft for B300k, the elderly lady was most reluctant to believe our paluang (the agent in the deal) & her children that this flimsy piece of paper was indeed money ! Bless her !

??

I put down 500,000 on my mortgage, as we sat in the Ampeur Muang housing office to sign the deeds. They waited until the transfer was done bank to bank via my phone, and when completed the forms were signed. What's with the bags of money or a banker's draft?

Hmmm....One of these people has the correct FET paper trail, and one may not.

Bank to Bank is standard operating proceedure ... for those who can have their money tracked.

For those who haul around their cash is sacks ... well .. there may be a bit more to the story.

I am confident that even 1,000 pieces of paper can be carried quite easily in a rolling suitcase.

Gentlemen, you have got some high class problems! 555 !!!!!!

[hawker9000]

All forms of trade have overhead. Cash costs governments money to mint. That money comes from your taxes. I couldn't find figures for Thai currency, but here it is for USD:

So there's your 5% "fee" for each dollar bill, 42% fee for each quarter, 46% fee for each dine and a whopping 188% fee for nickels and pennies.

The amount of money that can be pocketed by a single dishonest employee far exceeds the small overhead charged by electronic transaction clearinghouses. When you factor in all the things that can go wrong with cash, it's clear that plastic is the safer & less expensive option.

As far back as 20 or 30 years ago I remember rental offices flatly refusing to take cash. I had to pay rent with a personal check or money order (plastic not being widely used back on those days).

In addition to cost overhead there's also risk, which is much higher for cash and virtually nonexistent for electronic transactions.

I had no idea that making a penny costs more than it's worth.

Thanks! What a hoot!

From time to time someone in Congress or at the mint or <???> has proposed that the penny be done away with for this very reason. Among the arguments against however (and there are actually some good ones) is the fact that eliminating it would leave the nickel as the lowest denominated coin, and that's arguably an even bigger money-loser than the penny (see the chart), esp. when you throw in the "mint overhead" (fixed costs) which would have to be reallocated from the penny minting to the mint operations on all the other coins. And then there's what many argue would be the "rounding tax" (consumers ending up paying higher prices "rounded up" to the next nickel). I wonder about that though. Take all those things that sell for $xxx.99 now. Wouldn't they have to start selling at $xxx.95?

[attrayant]

I've participated in those 'abolish the penny" discussions. The rounding would only be on the grand total, not on each individual item.

I believe Canada and Australia got rid of their pennies a while ago, and they seem to be doing fine. The US discontinued the half penny in 1857, which - adjusted for inflation - had more purchasing power at the time than a dime does today. Pennies are nearly worthless dead weight in my pocket.

Anyway, sales tax calculations already can result in fractional values of a cent, so we're not averse to rounding off (the cash registers do it automatically). When was the last time you paid $2.50 and nine-tenths of a cent for a gallon of gasoline?

To bring this back around to Thailand... my local song-taeo driver refuses to accept half and quarter baht coins. Sometimes the 7-11 and Big C cashier don't have any in the cash drawer, and I get my change rounded to the nearest baht.

[canuckamuck]

The next size up for Thailand should be the 2000 baht note.

It would reduce the bulk in large purchase by half, and still be small enough to get change in bigger stores.

Also it would not be a much greater risk for money laundering, which I believe is the main reason denominations are kept smallish.

I once had 3 Canadian $1000 bills. I used them to buy a second hand medium format camera to start my photography business.

[IsaanUSA]

Great news.

Will I be able to buy more with the new 100 baht than with the old style notes?

No, it is 100 baht.

And thanks to inflation, you're actually be able to buy less with it.

That has nothing to do with his question. The old 100 baht note is worth the same as a new 100 baht note. 100 baht.

But to address your reply, I didn't see inflation go up from Tuesday to Wednesday, so I doubt it will magically go up tomorrow when the new 100 baht notes are released.

[attrayant]

In the future, all of my jokes will be closed captioned for the humor impaired.

[not really]

Edited February 26, 2015 by attrayant

[theslime]

https://wikileaks.org/aus-suppression-order/ I cant believe the Corruption involved in Plastic money Suppliers, and the Australian has censored news. Saddam, Jordan,Arms Deaers from Malaysia, Indo, Vietnam. As Thailand would never be involved in such malpractice, I didnt see their name mentioned.