It has been proposed and will be discussed at the CCSA meeting on Thursday (today):

6

The same way a foreigner in Thailand would, with the obvious substitution of a Thai ID or Passport and a blue house registration book (tabian bahn):

@Vit ********

If you have been able to do a 90-Day Report then that immigration office should be willing to issue you a Certificate of Residence. There is sometimes an associated cost, I pay 300 baht each for mine.

You could try to use the Notification of Residence receipt (TM-30). It may work.

The embassy letter is basically just an affidavit, a sworn statement, stamped by the embassy. Something like:

John Doe, a citizen of country x with passport # 689, resides at this address in Thailand:

your Thai address here

@Vit ********

I don't believe the 90-Day Report/Notification of Residence receipt will work because it doesn't show your address in Thailand. The TM-30 receipt might work because that does show your address. I would suggest that you get a Certificate of Residence from immigration. It will show your Thai address and it's issued by a branch of the Thai government.

Have a Thai write you a letter of reference, better if they are a customer of that bank branch. Have them accompany you to the branch.

Obtain a letter from your embassy/consulate attesting to your address in Thailand.

These are suggestions of things to try to improve your odds of getting an account opened. I would try the Certificate of Residence first as it's probably easier and cheaper to obtain than the embassy letter.

Understand that you are trying to make the bank feel comfortable, have a warm fuzzy feeling about you.

First, all immigration offices allow you to apply for a new extension of stay 30 days from the expiration of your current permission to stay, some offices allow you to do so 45 days early. Do it as early as possible. Why? Because then time is on your side when it comes to unexpected problems. You have nothing to lose by doing it early (the new extension of stay will start from the day your old one expires, not from when you apply).

For example, some banks (Bangkok Bank, being one) do not keep 12 months worth of client data at all branches. If you need a 12-month statement from one of these banks it can take a week or more to get the statement issued from their headquarters in Bangkok.

@Scot ******

Yes, wouldn't be using ATM for transferring 800,000 baht (daily ATM withdrawal limit on my Schwab account is $1,000 I believe), but it can come in handy for bringing in $1,000 after you're here. ;-)

I would investigate the cost for Wise and compare it to the cost of doing a SWIFT wire from one of your existing banks to a Thai bank. Which one is better is very much dependent on the amount of money being transferred. With a bank, you generally have a poorer exchange rate but with fixed fees, while with Wise you have a better exchange rate but with proportional fees. Wise will do the calculations for you, while you will have to do the calculations for a SWIFT transfer from your bank yourself. Don't forget the Bank of Thailand fee of 0.25% of the total amount (minimum fee of 200 baht and a maximum fee of 500 baht) for receiving foreign currency in Thailand. A SWIFT transfer will incur this fee, but a Wise transfer won't. You always want to send foreign currency to Thailand rather than baht. The exchange rate for baht is always better in Thailand than outside.

Yes, I've used them in the past. I currently use a Charles Schwab debit ATM card to withdraw 30,000 baht at a time from a Krungsri ATM machine. The exchange rate is decent and Charles Schwab reimburses the 220 baht fee that Thai ATMs charge for a withdrawal transaction. I would use Wise again if I needed to bring over more than $1,000 at a time. Bangkok Bank used to have a wonderful service for transferring money from the US through their NY branch until the US government stopped them from doing so. Nothing wrong with using bank wire transfers either if your bank doesn't charge a lot for the privilege of sending a wire (via SWIFT).

Wise generally gives an excellent exchange rate (mid-market basically) they make their money on the fees they charge which they are very upfront about and have a calculator which shows exactly what baht will arrive in Thailand and the fees charged. It's a good service.

@Scot ******

Well, the Thai bank account needs to be set up by you in person in Thailand. But the Wise account takes a few days to set up. They have to approve the account, I believe they asked me to email them a copy of my passport to satisfy the "know your customer" anti-money laundering rules. You can also link existing accounts to your Wise account as funding sources. That sort of thing. But you can't transfer the money into your Thai bank account until you actually have a Thai bank account. ;-)

I'm a do-it-yourselfer so it goes against my grain to say use an agent. That said, they can be helpful with a complicated case. The retirement extension for one person I think is doable by an individual. If you were married and wanted to try to get a spouse to piggyback on your Non-O Retirement visa with a dependent visa it starts to get a bit more complicated. Doable but a little more complicated in terms of timing.

Obviously, using an agent is going to cost money. I don't have a problem with using an agent if you don't mind parting with the money they will charge.

I would not use an agent if they wanted to skirt the rules. For example, if you talk to an agent and they suggest you don't really need to have 800,000 baht in a Thai bank account, in fact, you don't really even need a Thai bank account, because they know people in immigration and they can get you a retirement extension of stay without all that, then I would stop talking to that agent. What that agent is doing is a gray area if not actually illegal and the problem is that if that's how you obtain your extension you may have to continue to use that agent in the future to obtain the next extension. It's not always easy to go straight if the gang won't let you. ;-)

There are agents that will simply do the paper-pushing and leg-work for you, and not skirt the rules. This type of agent will still want to get paid of course, but much less money than the skirt-the-rules type of agent. The reason the skirt-the-rules type of agent wants more money is that they actually don't get to keep it all, they have lots of "friends" that they have to share it with.

You can judge what type of agent you're dealing with by how much they want to charge you for their services. If it's a lot of money, you know they will be skirting the rules. If it's not a lot of money it's more likely they will just be doing paperwork and leg-work for you, not paying out bribes.

Of course, if you do everything yourself, you don't have to worry about what sort of agent you've gotten yourself. ;-)