Thread: What's the best way to transfer money to Thailand.

Confusing thread title! Should it be "How to..?

I did as DD advised, and brought it fifty pound notes in a passport holder with pockets, worn around the neck and inside my shirt,or you could put half of it in your other half's handbag ,as she has her gold in there, and she will never let go of it, but make sure the notes are not torn as the bank would not accept them.

Originally Posted by daox

i need to take money from uk to thailand to kick off a housing project

Sounds promising...

Leave it in your bank in the UK and tell them you will be travelling in Thailand so they don't shut off your ATM card then use the card to withdraw the money daily, your bank will think you are fu****g yourself to death

Send a CHAPS payment from the uk to the account in Thailand.

You MUST send the money in sterling and the bank in Thailand will transfer into baht. You will get a better exchange rate that way.

If you dont have an account in Thailand, you can sent the money to my account, here are the details

acc num 831-3432-7765
SCB bank Khon Kaen
Swift code: SCBHIKO

Cheers

suitcase. it's only 15,000 pounds fer fcks sake.

Originally Posted by Spin

If you dont have an account in Thailand, you can sent the money to my account, here are the details acc num 831-3432-7765 SCB bank Khon Kaen Swift code: SCBHIKO

My mate in Nigeria thanks you for that info.

go to thailand open a bank acaunt in your own name and telefone your bank in uk give them the swif code and the acaunt number and tellthem to transfer the money in sterling u get better rate whith electronic transfer than cash

Open a UK Nationwide Flex account. Get a debit card from them and withdraw it in Thailand ATMs at 20000bht a day without any charges.

^ hey that's what I said!! what's the difference between a "debit" card and a "ATM" why do you guys in the UK like to be different from us Mericans

^ we are different....English are special!

^I'm a Scot transplant in America so I know how "special/Different" you English are LOL

Originally Posted by Spin

Send a CHAPS payment from the uk to the account in Thailand. You MUST send the money in sterling and the bank in Thailand will transfer into baht. You will get a better exchange rate that way.

By far the best way IMHO and definitely the safest but notice what is said, you MUST have the money sent to Thailand in Sterling.
Large envelopes full of cash?? Why take the risk??
Provided you use one of the large clearers in UK and one of the main banks here in Thailand you should have no problems. (I've done it for nearly 30 years without the slightest difficulty).The UK bank will probably want to take a photostat of your passport, ask you where the money came from and what you're going to do with it. If you do go down the cash road, attempt to take more than £10,000 out as cash at any one time and your account will be 'flagged' by the bank for further scrutiny and you won't even know it 'caus they don't tell you! (all this is to do with recent EU money laundering legislation). You can complain but you'll get nowhere, if the bank is found by HMRC to have failed to have carried out the checks they can be fined huge amounts and they've tightened up considerably over the past couple of years. You'd be surprised how many UK bank accounts are being monitored for 'unusual' transactions including all accounts banking largish amounts of cash.
Another option is to use large denomination, sterling, travellers cheques. You'll get a slightly lower rate than using CHAPS and depending on what you think is going to happen to the currencies, if you time it right, you can be better off. Anything more than £10,000 though and you'll still have jump through the hoops.

What I do if I need a bit of cash.
I have a SCB savings account, have had it since I came here, also have a DEBIT/ATM card on my US bank.
I go into my SCB bank and give the girl the Debit card and tell her how much money I want to transfer into my SCB account.
She runs the Visa Debit card thru the imprint machine and I sign the slip, then in about 1 minute after she makes the phone call, the money is in my SCB account, She runs my passbook thru the machine and it is registered,,I can draw at the ATM or across the counter.
The transaction costs me 30 baht.

Very simple doing it with a Debit/Atm card as CIRRUS is everywhere and it actually just goes from one account to another in that system.

What blackgang is describing is called a "point of sale" transfer because they generally do it with a point of sale type card reading machine.

I've tried to get Bangkok Bank to do this and they look at me as if I'd just arrived from the moon. I gave up.

When I bought a car (about US$15,000) I just started withdrawing the maximum every day from my US accounts at ATM machines. Then I used the cash deposit machines to put the money into my Bangkok Bank account. This cost nothing, but took nearly a month of daily withdrawals.

This is what I do now for my normal daily expenses so that I'll have a Thai bank book with lots of activity to show Immigration next time I get an extension. Withdraw cash from an ATM, deposit cash at a cash deposit machine, go back to the ATM and withdraw cash....

I thought the banks in the UK got interested in sums greater than 7K?

I have never had a problem with it, I just give the girl my passbook and my debit card and tell her I want to transfer XXX dollars to the thai account.
sometimes they charge me 20 or 30 baht and sometimes no charge.

But then I do the same thing with the account that you do, lots of small withdraws. makes immigration happy.

many thanks to all the replies i do have a bank account in thailand so it would seem a transfer from my uk bank to thai account would be best i look forward to posting pics etc in the house build section when it all starts and thanks all again

OK, Yea and when they do the transfer for you then it is in your passbook as an out of country transfer, so Immigration likes that.

I have a bank account here in LOS. Before I come over I do a telex transfer, in sterling, from England to Thailand. That way, it saves having to carry much. Some banks will transfer by fax, if you are in LOS already. Mine did the first time. If you have the SWIFT Code of your destination bank, it's easy. If you are in England and you don't have a destination bank in LOS, any of the other suggestions given above are just as good. Personally, I would not carry that ammount of cash but the choice is yours.

The maximum cash you can take out of the UK (or any other EU country) is 10,000 Euros, without incurring the wrath of the authorities