Who charges this fee to you?

The bank itself?

Or you are opening the bank acc through an agent?

Bank does not charge this much, or even none.

Some may charge you a hundred or two to issue the debit card, operation fee etc.

And may request to make a minimum amount of deposit.

An agent on the other hand, will charge you a fee of course, a few thousands are very often.

people opens bank accounts through agents because they are rejected by the bank. In general banks will require customer to have a valid visa (working / retirement, tourist not accepted), if you only have a tourist visa you either need very good luck to find a bank teller that does not care about the visa or you have to find an agent and pay for them to put you through by their connections.

@Stuart ********

oh i didn’t know there is a limitation of two times a year of land border entry.

Thank you for telling.

@Steve ******

yeah I read this recommendation before.

But the current situation is, we still haven't decided yet which province to stay for long, perhaps bangkok or Chiang mai.

However, as the retirement visa requires to have 800k baht in the bank for more than 3months (or 2?), which means if I don't have the bank account opened this time, it must take me 2 times to travel to thailand, one time to open the bank acc, and the other time 2-3 months later to apply the retirement visa.

We are hoping to have a bank account ready in this trip so no need to travel one time specifically for that.

say, if this time I open the acc in Bangkok, and a year later we decide to live in Chiang Mai, after I get the retirement visa I can open a new bank account, perhaps in a different bank?

@Ali ******

thank you

@Neil ********

really??? I will definitely try that. 👍

@John *********

thank you.

I am gonna give a week to 10 days, hit every branch I see on the way.

if there is no luck eventually, then I will need a backup plan, hopefully can find one that costs the least 😅