also it's even slower when you declare that you are sending funds internationally to an account that is not yours and can increase scrutiny. I'm a little skeptical that 90% of your friends are paying their rent directly with wise. That would be a lot more expensive than getting a thai bank account

@Dan ******

wise is anything but instant, i've been using wise and xe for many years (xe is often cheaper) but neither one is fast. International bank transfers are never fast.

How are your friends getting all this cash if they don't have a thai bank account?

Also why would they pay all those fees just to pay a monthly rent? Seems to be cheaper to move a chunk of money over into a Thai bank account and deal with everything from there.

@Dan ******

Wise can take a couple weeks for all the ACH stuff to clear. That's crazy. Most of my friends are on retiree visas which require a thai bank account. Perhaps your friends are all high-rollers on elite visas.

@Bill ***********

they don't require a bank account to sign a lease. But that's how most people pay, bank to bank transfer to the landlord. If you want to go in there with a wad of cash I'm sure they will still lease it to you. It just strikes me as an odd order to do things in. I got my bank account long before i signed a lease.

@John *********

yes it depends on the branch manager what they will do for you. But if they are asking him for something from the embassy then it's almost certainly a notarized copy of his passport. If he wants to go from branch to branch looking for someone to give him the account without it, that's an option.

The reason they do this is to avoid the problem of a bank teller not being an expert in how to identify a forged passport and relying on the embassy to declare it authentic.

@Bill ***********

condo, house, whatever... point being you entered into the lease without a Thai bank account. Which is a bit out of the ordinary I would think. Taking a couple months rent in cash... /shrug.

@Bill ***********

You leased a condo without a bank account? Interesting order of operations. Again, it's up to the branch manager of the bank what they require but I've heard of many people having to get the notarized copy

@Bill ***********

Yes, that was what bangkok bank required. You go to the embassy and they photocopy it and then notarize it and you take that plus the actual passport to back to the branch. That's exactly what I had to do

@Bill ***********

it's up to the bank's local manager and is pretty common. But if they are asking for something from the embassy that's probably what they want.