What are the best and cheapest options to transfer money from the UK to Thailand?

@Chris ***************

it's very transparent. There's no charge for Kbank when receiving a transfer

Typically you pay a charge for exchanging let's say euros (in your context) to thb

For illustration purposes:

Step 1: topping up thb in your native currency

E.g. they will show

800 euro -> 35,090 thb

Our fee: 30.53thb

Then the exchange rate is given (usually quite good, as good as Google's rate)

You will receive: 35,059.47 thb

Step 2: Sending the thb to your Kbank

Once you set up the transfer by profiling it as your own bank, account, you can select "Your Accounts"

Then the same thing:

You're sending 35,059.47 thb

Our fee: 30.XX thb

You will receive 35,0XX.XX thb.

Based on my experience, topping up usually instant (sometimes takes 30mins max), transferring to your own bank account is instant (at least for all the transfers I did)

My wise card is issued in Singapore, so maximum amount I can hold in my wise is 121K thb aka 5000 sgd. I'm not sure of the limits for UK wise account, but you can just go press Thai baht and enter a huge number and they will show you your limit.

All in all, I think wise is easy to use and transparent when converting local currency to thb. I've been using it before I gotten my Kbank account and using the wise card for payments in restaurants.

Of course now that I've got my Kbank, I just QR code payment everywhere 🤣🤣🤣🤣

@Ch***

it doesn't matter if you transfer into a FCD or just direct to a THB account. It works out exactly the same cost. The only difference with the FCD is you can delay the conversion, so you can hold the money in Thailand but in the foreign currency, and wait and convert it later.

@Da**

was confusing the sending OUT fee with the in fee, the in fee is 0.25% min 200 max 500. It's exactly the same whether you receive it into a FCD or THB account. Only difference is you can delay the conversion, if you do it straight through it will be exactly the same.

For sending back out without converting the fees are higher for GBP, it's 0.5% rather than 0.25% (plus the SWIFT fee).

There isn't really an advantage to a FCD unless you want to keep money in Thailand but without converting it to THB. When you didn't need to keep a large minimum in account year round for visa reasons this could make sense as you could send it back after you got your renewal, this makes less sense now though.

My experience with the card, the forex fees aren't quite that bad, they are typically under 1%, sometimes well under, but I'm not using GBP. Checking MC and Visa right now, this seems to be a GBP thing rather than a MC/Visa thing, they are similar but GBP is a bad rate. I see it's 1.44% on GBP while it's only 0.27% on USD. Crazy.

@Ivan ***********

I just did the transaction a few weeks ago. My bank never charged me a fee since it was domestic. Not sure how the actual coding was done but I wasn’t charged a wire fee. Schwab said it was considered Domestic wire. Either way I wasn’t charged a fee.

There is no way to beat swift transfer when sending in the origin country currency

@Ivan ***********

unfortunately you are mistaken column 3 here is the telex transfer rate between banks and that cannot be beaten unless a loss is taken. The example here is UK Vs baht right now

@Ivan ***********

I don't believe there is a better rate than the interbank telex transfer rate, but if so happy to learn about it.

@Todd ********

😀 I don’t mind how they stay in business as long as I can send my money free of charge. They are using normal exchange rates (Same rates like big Banks in GER and THA). I use them now since more then one year and transferred many times amounts between 1000-3000 €. Always fast and without any complaints.