Paying for things in Thailand.

The three layers, and knowing which one you are standing on

Clients arrive with the habits of the country they left. From New York or London, a card covers everything and cash feels quaint. From Delhi or Mumbai, a single domestic rail has swallowed the small end of the market and cards sit above it for the large transactions. Thailand does something else again: it runs three payment systems side by side, all day, every day, and the whole skill of paying for things here is knowing which one the person in front of you actually uses. The top layer is international cards, which cover hotels, private hospitals, airlines, department stores, malls and the better restaurants with no friction at all. The middle layer, and by transaction volume the largest by a wide margin, is PromptPay, the domestic instant transfer rail that Thai people use through a QR code for almost everything: the tailor, the noodle shop, the motorcycle taxi, the office lunch collection. The bottom layer is cash, which never fails, and which still settles markets, temple donations, tips, boat crews, small drivers and a hundred ordinary moments in a day.

The seam between the layers is not where visitors expect. It is not about price: a two thousand baht dinner in an independent restaurant may be cash or QR only, while a sixty baht coffee in a mall takes contactless without blinking. The seam is about what kind of business you are dealing with. Anything corporate, chained, hotel owned, hospital owned or mall based sits on the card layer. Anything owner operated, family run or street based sits on the QR and cash layers, because a QR sticker costs the owner nothing and a card terminal costs real money on every transaction. Once you read the merchant rather than the amount, Thailand stops being confusing. A family that keeps a card for the institutional spend and a sensible cash float for everything else will go a fortnight without a single awkward moment at a counter.

Visa and Mastercard: the workhorses

Visa and Mastercard are the practical default and the answer to almost every large payment. They are taken without question at the international hotels and resorts, at the private hospitals our clients use, at Central, Siam Paragon, EmQuartier, IconSiam and the rest of the mall estate, at supermarkets, at airline offices, at fine dining rooms and hotel restaurants, at the established jewellers and tailors, and at the car and driver companies the office books. Debit and credit both work; a debit card issued abroad behaves like a credit card at the terminal but draws from your account immediately. The chip is standard, contactless is standard, and mobile wallets on a phone or watch work anywhere the contactless symbol appears, which is now most terminals in the tourist and business districts.

Where they stop working is worth memorising. Street food and market stalls take no cards at all. Taxis flagged on the street are a cash proposition, whatever the sticker on the window says. Small family restaurants, neighbourhood clinics, provincial guesthouses, temple offices, beach vendors, boat operators and most independent spas and salons will point at a QR code or hold out a hand. And there is a particular Thai phrase to learn to read: when a merchant says the card machine is not working today, it is sometimes true and often means the owner would rather not pay the acquiring fee. Do not argue it. Pay cash or QR, or shop elsewhere. On the mechanics of the terminal itself, expect the handheld device to be brought to your table rather than your card taken away, which is good practice and worth insisting on where it does not happen. Chip and PIN is normal; a foreign card will sometimes prompt for a signature instead, which unsettles nobody. Keep the card in your own hand until the moment it goes into the terminal, and take it back immediately.

American Express: the honest position

We are asked about American Express constantly, usually by clients whose entire spending life at home runs through a Platinum or Centurion card, and the honest answer is that Thailand is a materially narrower market for Amex than for Visa and Mastercard. The reason is not mysterious and it is not prejudice: the merchant discount rate on an Amex transaction is higher than on the other two schemes, and Thai merchants outside the large corporate estate simply decline to absorb it. That is a commercial decision repeated a few hundred thousand times, and it produces a map with sharp edges.

Where Amex is strong, it is genuinely strong. The international hotel groups take it, including at the top of the market. Airlines take it. The large private hospitals take it. Luxury retail inside the mall estate takes it, and the concierge benefits attached to a premium Amex are useful in Bangkok precisely because the hotels and restaurants that respond to them are the ones that accept the card. Where it is weak, it is weak enough to plan around: independent restaurants outside hotels, most owner operated retail, spas and salons off the hotel estate, small tour and boat operators, provincial anything, and the entire QR economy. A minority of merchants who do accept it will quietly add a surcharge for it, commonly quoted somewhere in the low single digit percentages, which you should be told about before the transaction and rarely are. Amex cash access in Thailand is also thinner than the other networks. The rule we give clients is simple: bring the Amex if the points, the protections or the concierge matter on the big items, and treat it as your hotel, hospital, airline and luxury retail card. Never come to Thailand with an Amex as your only card. A Visa or Mastercard as the everyday instrument, and a few thousand baht in the pocket, closes every gap the Amex leaves.

PromptPay and why the country runs on it

PromptPay is Thailand's national instant payment rail, and the printed QR code taped to a counter is its face. A Thai customer opens a banking app, scans the code, types the amount, confirms with a fingerprint, and the money is in the merchant's account in about two seconds, at a cost to both sides that is effectively nothing at everyday amounts. That last point is the whole story. A noodle vendor cannot justify a card terminal and the fees attached to it, but a laminated QR sheet costs a few baht at a print shop. The result is that within a few years QR acceptance overtook cards everywhere below the department store level, and the standard is now interoperable across the Thai banks, so any Thai bank app can pay any Thai merchant's code. Our full treatment sits in the PromptPay guide; the short version for a visitor is that you will see the code everywhere and should understand what it is even if you cannot use it.

Whether a visitor can use it is the question we field most. PromptPay registration is anchored to a Thai bank account, and a Thai bank account in practice requires the right immigration status and documentation, so the ordinary short stay visitor cannot simply sign up. There are cross border QR arrangements between Thailand and a growing list of countries, rolled out in stages and offered by particular banks rather than universally, so whether your own home banking app can scan a Thai merchant's code depends entirely on your own bank and on the merchant's acquirer. Some clients find it works beautifully; others find it works for one week and not the next. Check with your home bank before you travel, and under no circumstances plan a trip on the assumption that it will work. Carry cash and a card, and treat any QR capability your app happens to have as a pleasant extra.

Where each method actually works

Dynamic currency conversion, and always choosing baht

This is the single most expensive habit a visitor can fall into, and it is presented as a courtesy. At the terminal or the ATM screen a question appears: would you like to pay in your home currency, at a guaranteed rate, with no surprises? Say no. Every time. What is being offered is dynamic currency conversion, and the conversion is performed not by your own card issuer but by the merchant's acquiring bank, at a rate that embeds a markup. The markups we see quoted sit in a wide band that can run to several per cent, and they replace your issuer's rate, which for most decent cards is close to the interbank rate with a modest and disclosed foreign transaction fee on top. Paying in your home currency reliably costs more than paying in baht. The guarantee is real; it is a guarantee that you will pay the worse rate.

In practice: at a card terminal, when the screen offers THB or your own currency, choose THB. At an ATM, when it offers a conversion, choose the option to proceed without conversion. If a cashier has already put the transaction through in your home currency, it is entirely reasonable to ask for it to be voided and re run in baht, and any competent hotel or restaurant will do it without fuss. Check the receipt before you leave the counter: it should show a baht amount and nothing else. Hotels are the place this bites hardest, because some property management systems default to settling a folio in the guest's home currency, and a two week stay converted at the wrong end of the spread is a real number. Say at check in that the folio is to be settled in baht, and check the final bill against that instruction.

Surcharges, ATM charges and the true cost of a card

Two other costs deserve attention. The first is the merchant surcharge. Card scheme rules and Thai practice both discourage surcharging, and you will never see it at a hotel, hospital or mall. You will occasionally see it at an independent restaurant, a small clinic, a tailor or a tour operator, where the owner will say plainly that paying by card adds a percentage, most often quoted at around three. That is a fair offer honestly made, and your choices are to accept it, to pay cash, or to pay by QR if you can. What is not acceptable is discovering the surcharge on the receipt afterwards; ask before you hand over the card at any independent merchant where the bill is large.

The second is the cost of turning a card into cash. Thai ATMs levy a fee on withdrawals made with foreign issued cards, charged by the machine's operator and quite separate from anything your own bank charges. It is disclosed on screen before you confirm, and you can always cancel at that point. Stacked up, a single careless withdrawal can carry four separate costs at once, which is why our guide to ATM withdrawals treats the arithmetic properly.

• The Thai ATM operator's fee, charged per withdrawal regardless of amount
• Your own issuer's foreign transaction fee, typically a percentage of the amount
• The exchange spread your issuer applies, which is usually modest but is never zero
• A cash advance fee plus interest from day one if you used a credit card rather than a debit card
• Dynamic currency conversion on top of all of the above, if you accepted the machine's offer

How much cash a family should actually carry

The right answer is enough to be frictionless and not a baht more. Cash in Thailand is a convenience instrument, not a store of value, and a family walking around with a very large sum has created a security problem in exchange for nothing. What we set up for clients is a daily float per adult, a modest reserve in the room safe, and a separate small envelope for tips, drivers and the temple, so that nobody is ever counting out notes in front of someone they are about to thank. The figures below are the working numbers our office uses, and they move with the season, the itinerary and the exchange rate.

Denominations matter more than the total. The thousand baht note is awkward at a stall and a small vendor may genuinely be unable to change it early in the morning; break large notes at a convenience store or a mall and keep a supply of hundreds and twenties for taxis, tips and street purchases. Keep the bulk in the room safe rather than on the person. And note the boundary that our office is firm about: currency brought into or taken out of Thailand above the declarable threshold must be declared to Thai Customs, and the equivalent rule applies in your own country on the way home. Anyone moving real money for a purchase, a long stay or a family transfer should be using a bank wire or a licensed transfer service with the paperwork intact, which our guide to sending money to Thailand covers in full. Cash is for the week, not for the transaction.

What the office actually does for a client week is unglamorous and works. We ask which cards are coming and check acceptance against the itinerary before arrival. We instruct the hotel to settle the folio in baht. We set a driver float that is topped up against receipts rather than handed over in a lump. We keep a small denomination reserve for tips so that no member of the family is ever caught short at a door. And we settle every vendor, from the florist to the photographer, by transfer with an invoice behind it. The family carries a card, a few thousand baht and nothing to think about.

Card acceptance, surcharges, ATM fees and QR interoperability all change, and individual merchants set their own rules regardless of what a scheme says. Verify your foreign transaction fees, cash advance terms and any cross border QR capability with your own card issuer and bank before you travel, and verify Thai payment and currency declaration rules with the Bank of Thailand and Thai Customs. Our office will confirm current practice for a specific itinerary on request.

This briefing is general information, not legal, tax or investment advice. Thai rules change frequently and individual cases differ. Verify current requirements with the relevant authorities, including the Immigration Bureau, the Board of Investment, the Land Department, the Department of Business Development and the Revenue Department, and take advice on your own facts before acting.